London's Newest Attraction: Wet Wipe Island, As Big As 2 Tennis Courts & Weighing As Much As 15 Doubledecker Buses

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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. “I’m shocked, to say the least,” says the 31-year-old architectural designer Adam Perry, whose office is just off the bridge. “To be honest, it makes me emotional and frustrated that people are actually flushing their wet wipes instead of disposing of them correctly. It’s slightly embarrassing. Don’t 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.”

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 – roughly equivalent to 15 of the capital’s doubledecker buses – will be pulled from the river in the next month.

It’s no wonder, then, that Wet Wipe Island – which has its own Google Maps listing (it’s recorded as a cultural landmark), should you struggle to find your way from the tube station – has garnered an unlikely notoriety in recent days. “My ears pricked up when I heard Hammersmith on the news,” 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. “I had no idea what they were doing over there until the other day. It’s not until you see [the detritus] up close that [you realise] it’s so dreadful.”

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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, “[it] throws them out into the Thames”, explains the charity’s Liz Gyekye. Because this part of the river is a slow-moving bend, they gather en masse – and their impact is “devastating for wildlife and potentially humans”, says Gyekye. In short, “they shouldn’t be in the environment.” Whether they’re 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 £18m. Although the government has pledged to ban wet wipes containing plastic, progress has stalled since last year’s general election.

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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/14/wet-wipe-island-london-river-thames-pollution-hammersmith-bridge