A shocking accumulation of wet wipes, equivalent to two tennis courts in size, has been discovered on the Thames foreshore near Hammersmith Bridge. The Port of London Authority (PLA) has begun a major clean-up operation, expected to remove over 180 tonnes of wipes—roughly the weight of 15 double-decker buses—over the next month.
The site, dubbed 'Wet Wipe Island', has become an unlikely landmark, even earning a listing on Google Maps. Local residents and workers expressed dismay at the scale of the problem. Architectural designer Adam Perry, 31, whose office overlooks the bridge, said he felt 'emotional and frustrated' that people are flushing wipes instead of disposing of them correctly.
The PLA is using a 'rake-and-shake' method to separate the wipes from river sediment, which will then be sent to landfill. The cost of the operation is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds, though the PLA declined to give an exact figure. Environmental charity Thames21 has also been involved, having manually removed around 140,000 wipes from the river since 2017.
Most wet wipes sold in the UK contain plastic, which harms wildlife and can enter the food chain. Thames Water clears 3.8 billion wipes from its network each year at a cost of £18 million. Despite government pledges to ban plastic-containing wipes, progress has stalled since the last general election.
Grace Rawnsley, the PLA's director of sustainability, noted that the Thames has recovered significantly since being declared 'biologically dead' in the 1950s, now hosting 125 fish species and 92 bird species. However, she stressed that 'we still have further to go' in tackling pollution.
