Ditch the wet wipes
Published: 25 Nov 2021
We’ve all seen them in the news probably over the last year or two.
Wet wipes are mostly responsible. They made up more than 90% of the material causing sewer blockages that Water UK investigated in 2017.
Wet wipes also end up out at sea, in our rivers and on our beaches.
They are produced in staggering numbers and to give a sense of scale… one US company (Nice-Pak), produces more than 125 billion wipes a year, just by themselves. If an average wet wipe is roughly a 6-inch (15cm) square, then one year’s worth of wet wipes, from just that one company, would stretch to the moon and back more than 24 times.
And they cost us a lot of money! Water UK point out: ‘In the UK alone, water companies spend approximately £88 million of our customer’s money clearing something like 360,000 blockages that occur annually in the sewerage network.’
The best answer is to say ‘no’ to wet wipes. If you can’t, then go for genuinely biodegradable/compostable ones – or make our own – and absolutely never flush them!