Marines Lagemaat, Scientific & Technical Affairs Director, EDANA04.12.18
Last week I received a link to online video footage of a field study being undertaken by Thames 21, a campaign group who aim at cleaning up the Thames river, looking at the effects of litter and pollution on the ecology of London’s principal waterway. Unsurprisingly, the news was not good. The river bed, riverbank and the water itself are all seriously damaged by the impact by of the urban lifestyle and habits of eight million Londoners. Wet wipes were a standout amongst a cabal of culprits. A dig under a single square meter of the Thames shoreline unearthed 40 congealed wet wipes1. It is claimed that the very shape of the shoreline has been changed due to the mass of litter clogging the river. Are wipes literally ‘redrawing the map’?
Wipes have certainly reshaped the consumer landscape in the past 30 years, answering some very real needs with unfortunate and unforeseen consequences. Dry nonwoven wipes were first used in the 1980s for medical applications. Wipes we
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