{"id":344035,"date":"2025-08-14T14:11:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T14:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/344035\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T14:11:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T14:11:19","slug":"welcome-to-wet-wipe-island-my-day-at-londons-grimmest-new-landmark-the-thames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/344035\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to \u2018Wet Wipe Island\u2019: my day at London\u2019s grimmest new landmark | The Thames"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine several mounds of congealed grot <\/strong>(consistency akin to the insides of a leisure centre shower drain, or the world\u2019s most disgusting pedal bin) washed up on the southern foreshore of the River Thames in London<\/a> at low tide. Then, imagine a tourist from New Zealand stopping to take a picture and several videos of said grot \u2013 presumably to show his kin back home what louts we are \u2013 while diggers deposit big black clods of the stuff into the bed of a truck, and rowers glide blithely by.<\/p>\n

Imagine it, or see it for yourself. Welcome to \u201cWet Wipe Island\u201d, London\u2019s newest \u2013 and grimmest \u2013 landmark.<\/p>\n

Forget the Grecian torsos and brute machiavellianism of Love Island. At the foot of Hammersmith Bridge, the show of the summer is fast becoming the excavation of this very different type of island, a stretch of the Thames that is saturated with enough discarded wet wipes to form two tennis courts.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s slightly embarrassing\u2019 \u2026 Adam Perry. Photograph: Alicia Canter\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m shocked, to say the least,\u201d says the 31-year-old architectural designer Adam Perry, whose office is just off the bridge. \u201cTo be honest, it makes me emotional and frustrated that people are actually flushing their wet wipes instead of disposing of them correctly. It\u2019s slightly embarrassing. Don\u2019t get me wrong, the majority of Londoners are doing their part, but all it takes is a certain percentage to do stuff like that and it affects us all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the numbers suggest that it is more than just a small percentage who are flushing these environmental terrors down the toilet. Grace Rawnsley, the director of sustainability for the Port of London Authority (PLA), which has taken on the gruesome task of dredging up the wet wipes, estimates that more than 180 tonnes \u2013 roughly equivalent to 15 of the capital\u2019s doubledecker buses \u2013 will be pulled from the river in the next month.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no wonder, then, that Wet Wipe Island \u2013 which has its own Google Maps listing<\/a> (it\u2019s recorded as a cultural landmark), should you struggle to find your way from the tube station \u2013 has garnered an unlikely notoriety in recent days. \u201cMy ears pricked up when I heard Hammersmith on the news,\u201d says 62-year-old Russell Page, who is nursing a pint outside the Rutland Arms, a pub with expansive views of the river and now, this first-of-its-kind cleanup operation. \u201cI had no idea what they were doing over there until the other day. It\u2019s not until you see [the detritus] up close that [you realise] it\u2019s so dreadful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waste of space \u2026 Rubbish and debris along the riverbank. Photograph: Alicia Canter\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

The self-financed PLA \u2013 which declined to say how much the cleanup will cost, though admitted it was \u201cin the hundreds of thousands\u201d \u2013 is using a \u201crake-and-shake\u201d method to sift the wipes, which get caught in the bucket of the digger like rotten string cheese, from the river sediment. They will eventually be put into landfill. \u201cThe sediment will be what\u2019s containing the aquatic invertebrates,\u201d says Rawnsley. \u201cWe\u2019re removing that contaminated layer while retaining as much of the foreshore as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you think that sounds like an unpleasant job, spare a thought for volunteers from the environmental charity Thames21, who have fished about 140,000 wet wipes by (gloved) hand from the river since 2017. When wipes are flushed into the sewage system, and the sewage system overflows in heavy rain, \u201c[it] throws them out into the Thames\u201d, explains the charity\u2019s Liz Gyekye. Because this part of the river is a slow-moving bend, they gather en masse \u2013 and their impact is \u201cdevastating for wildlife and potentially humans\u201d, says Gyekye. In short, \u201cthey shouldn\u2019t be in the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether they\u2019re used for makeup removal or nappy changing, most wipes sold in the UK contain plastic, which invariably ends up in the systems of the invertebrates, fish and birds that call the Thames home. Every year, Thames Water clears 3.8bn wipes from its network at an annual cost of \u00a318m. Although the government has pledged to ban wet wipes containing plastic, progress has stalled<\/a> since last year\u2019s general election.<\/p>\n

Grace Rawnsley. Photograph: Alicia Canter\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s not all bad. \u201cThe story of this river is the story of recovery,\u201d says Rawnsley. Where parts of the Thames were declared \u201cbiologically dead\u201d in the 1950s, today, with 125 different species of fish and 92 species of bird, \u201cit\u2019s on its way back to being miraculous \u2013 but we still have further to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s not just wet wipes that are blighting the UK\u2019s second-longest river. Most Londoners have a pub story about the most menacing thing they\u2019ve spotted in the Thames. (My own was a lifesize crucifix, which I watched being thrown into the water from Vauxhall Bridge.) \u201cI\u2019ve seen lots of horrible things floating,\u201d says a 69-year-old passerby, Doune Storey. \u201cTampons, Durex, nappies. It\u2019s got to go somewhere \u2013 it\u2019s not just going to go into the ether. We\u2019ve all got to be more responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, over the course of a two-day environmental survey, the PLA pulled 29 bikes (15 of which were Lime bikes<\/a>), a park bench, a wheel clamp and an empty safe from the river.<\/p>\n

As for Wet Wipe Island, Rawnsley hopes it will soon be wiped from the map once and for all: \u201cWithout sounding too virtuous, we\u2019re working towards making the Thames the river that everyone wants it to be.\u201d Who knows, maybe in a few years we\u2019ll be living la vie parisienne and swimming in it. Maybe.<\/p>\n

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