Five million wet wipes dug out in clean-up of London’s ‘Wet Wipe Island’

Five million wet wipes dug out in clean-up of London’s ‘Wet Wipe Island’ - Port of London Authority

114 tonnes – including about c. 5 million wet wipes – has been removed from ‘Wet Wipe Island’ on the River Thames by the Port of London Authority, in collaboration with Thames Water and environmental charity Thames21
The operation was the country’s first mass wet wipe removal project of its kind which also scooped up towels, scarves, trousers and false teeth

Port of London Authority, in collaboration with Thames Water and environmental charity Thames21, has completed a three-week project and removed about 5 million wet wipes that had congealed into a 250-metre island on the foreshore of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge.

Also among the 114 tonnes removed was towels, scarves, trousers, pants, a car’s engine timing belt and even a set of dentures that had been trapped in the ‘island’.

To remove the potentially harmful and polluting ‘island’, engineers on site developed an innovative ‘rake and shake’ method. They used two eight-tonne excavators to sift through the island, separating wet wipes and waste from the natural sediment and riverbed, to minimise the environmental impact.

In total, almost 200 cubic metres of wet wipes containing plastics were taken away in 15 skips and disposed of responsibly. It comes as the Government has published draft legislation to ban wet wipes that contain plastics.

The island, which was about the size of two tennis courts and up to 1m high in places, had changed the course of the river and potentially harmed the aquatic wildlife and ecology in the area.

Posted On: 16/09/2025

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