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The Thames is rank. Really, really rank. It’s being literally reshaped by thousands of muddy, mooshy, wet wipes that are flushed down the toilet by lazy Londoners and enter the river from overflowing sewage systems when it rains. Charming.
Most of the wipes people use contain plastic and are not biodegradable. They stick together with mud to make slimy, mountainous clumps, clogging the river bed at hotspots like Battersea, Hammersmith and Barnes where the river bends and water moves more slowly.
Last week, environmental charity Thames21 counted 27,400 wet wipes at the Battersea Bridge area of the Thames. That’s only at one small site – imagine how many are in the entire river. The charity’s data found that one mound grew by 1.4 metres in height in just under five years, covering the area of two tennis courts. And this isn’t a new problem: in 2017, more than 4,500 wipes were found in one 154-metre-squared patch of foreshore.
Wipes are also bad news for our wider ecosystem: as they eventually break down, microplastics enter the food chain, choking our fish and entering our water supply. Not good for the Thames’s eels, which are already getting high off London’s excessive cocaine use.
Sounds like something has got to change. Probably your habits. Thames21 is calling for the government to introduce official and mandatory standards for clear labelling about what is and what isn’t flushable. It’s also asking folk to ‘Bin Don’t Flush’: only piss, toilet paper and poop should go down the loo.
Fancy getting your hands dirty and helping the Thames litter problem? You can train as a ‘citizen scientist’, just email thamesriverwatch@thames21.org.uk