Thames Water has seen a sustained 67% overall reduction in wet wipes being flushed down toilets, after launching a targeted customer awareness campaign, in sewer blockage hotspots across North Hampshire and West Berkshire.
The reduction follows education campaigns in Beenham, West Berkshire, along with Popley and Farnborough in Hampshire, where Thames Water teams deployed large and small hedgehog tool installations to raise awareness of the damage caused by flushing wet wipes and other un-flushable items.
The hedgehog tool is a metal investigative device with spikes that resemble a hedgehog. These spikes catch wipes flushed into the sewer system, helping to trace the source of the wipes and prevent blockages.
The company first introduced its innovative hedgehog-style tool in 2025. Building on its success, a smaller version was adopted specifically to navigate tighter sections of pipework and help prevent sewer flooding in customers' homes.
The ‘hedgehog’ initiative combined the removal of wipes from the sewer network with door-to-door engagement, helping residents understand the impact that incorrectly flushed items can have on sewers, including blockages and flooding.
The teams first targeted Beenham in West Berkshire in September 2025. By the end of the intervention in December, wipe counts had more than halved, falling by 51%. When the team returned five months later, in May and June 2026, they found wipe counts remained 54% lower than before the intervention began.
The team then moved on to Popley in Basingstoke in December 2025, where they also saw a substantial reduction in wipes entering the sewer network. Across four monitoring locations, wipes fell from 236 before intervention to 64 six months later, representing a 73% reduction.
Across two areas in Farnborough, teams recorded a 70% reduction in wipes when comparing surveys carried out in late May and early June 2026 against the pre-intervention baseline established in February and March 2026.
Wet wipes continue to be a major cause of sewer blockages across the Thames Water network, contributing to property damage and road flooding. The water company has already cleared more than 23,000 wipe-related blockages this year alone, the equivalent of over 100 every day. Around 3.8 billion wet wipes are flushed into Thames Water's sewer network every year.
The cost of removing wipes and other un-flushable items, such as sanitary products and rags, along with repairing the resulting damage, is estimated at £21 million a year.
Alex Dudfield, Pollution Improvement Manager at Thames Water, said:
“I’d like to say a huge thank you to all our customers across Beenham, Popley, and Farnborough for their support in tackling the wet wipe issue. Clearing preventable wipes blockages costs money, money that we would rather spend on upgrading our network, so it’s great to see fewer wipes being flushed in these hotspot areas, proving that simple changes at home can have a real impact.
“Working in local communities has really helped spread the message about what belongs down the loo and what doesn’t, and the response from residents has been really encouraging to see.”
Unlike toilet paper, wet wipes do not break down in the sewer system. Instead, they can become trapped and form the backbone of “fatbergs” - the congealed masses that block pipes, cause pollution, and increase the need for storm overflows, which can lead to further environmental harm.