Bin the Wipe Campaign
Ashington Town Council are supporting @Northumbrian Water’s Bin the Wipe campaign to raise awareness of the devastating consequences that can happen when wet wipes are wrongly flushed down the toilet.
In early 2020, Northumbrian Water decided to launch our ‘Bin the Wipe’ campaign after finding 64% of the 15,600 sewer blockages cleared in the North East in 2019 were caused by wet wipes.
In a water industry first, we decided to target and proactively engage with communities identified as blockage hotspot areas in the North East, through our ‘Bin the Wipe’ campaign. We focused initially on the TS19 area of Stockton, which was aimed at encouraging people to dispose of wet wipes correctly and not flush them down the toilet.
Despite the pilot running in the middle of a pandemic and during reported toilet roll shortages, our ‘Bin the Wipe’ trials still saw a reduction of around 61% in the problem of wrongly-flushed wipes contributing to clogged up sewers. We therefore began to roll-out the initiative to more areas of the North East in 2020, including Middlesbrough and Redcar.
Why is flushing wet wipes an issue? Around 90% of wet wipes contain plastic making them, in effect, single use plastic. Unlike toilet paper, wipes do not break down quickly in sewers, and can settle or snag in pipes, starting build-ups that can cause sewage to back-up into homes or businesses, or even spill into the environment and endanger wildlife. They can also have negative effects of us having to carry out major roadworks in communities to fix problems.
Customers in the following postal areas have been identified as having a high volume of blockages containing wipes:
NE62 5, NE63 8, NE63 9
Next week, we will start to contact 14,291 households within the identified postal locations to explain the problems caused by flushing wet wipes and to inform customers that our teams will be actively working in those areas.
Residents will initially receive a letter with a simple message of what can happen when wipes are flushed and cause a blockage. We will also let them know that we will be using smart technologies to monitor the sewers to narrow the search down to streets, then identifying which households the wipes have been flushed from. We will continue to encourage people to stop flushing wipes through direct conversations and letters.
We hope that this awareness-raising activity will be enough to encourage people to change their toilet habits. However, if we identify repeat offenders, we may look to take further action and recharge them for the associated cost of clearing those blockages. This approach comes as we need to protect our customers, communities and the environment from the adverse effects of wrongly flushing wet wipes.
More info: nwl.co.uk/binthewipe
