At Minworth Wastewater Treatment works in the Midlands the scale of the current problem can be both seen and smelt.
Minworth serves a population of more than two million people across Birmingham and the Black Country and Severn Trent, who run the facility, say 10 tonnes a day of wet wipes end up here.
“It’s a nightmare,” Grant Mitchell, Severn Trent’s head of blockages says, as we survey a small mountain of wipes.
He’s just shown us the area where the “un-flushables” are filtered out from the sewage. It’s grotty stuff. There are dead rats, a rubber duck as well as a huge ball of soiled wipes.
“Wet wipes are a problem because they’re made to not break down like toilet paper,” he says. “So they stay in one piece, and they gather together with fat, oil, and grease from kitchens, congeal and create a fatberg which causes flooding.”
Also on hand at Minworth is Emma Hardy the Minister for Water and Flooding.
“It’s going to make a huge difference,” Emma Hardy, the Minister for Water and Flooding, said of the ban as we sheltered from the rain at Minworth. “I think people maybe underestimate the amount of problems that these wet wipes cause.”