Draft Regulations laid on 16 September banning the supply and sale of wet wipes containing plastic which will be signed into law today will come into force 18 months after the day on which they are made.
180 tonnes of congealed wet wipes – the equivalent to the weight of 15 double decker London buses – are being removed from the River Thames by the Port of London Authority, in collaboration with Thames Water.
A 120 tonne fatberg, equivalent in size of a blue whale, has been removed from a large trunk sewer in Oxford. Clearing the fatberg required a coordinated effort from multiple Thames Water teams and contractors, highlighting the scale and complexity of the operation.
Water UK, the organisation which represents all the UK water companies, are calling on the Government to go further and faster on in taking action on wet wipes.
The UK Government, Welsh Government, Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive have all taken the decision to proceed with legislation to ban the supply and sale of wet wipes containing plastic across the UK.
In a new report published today, the Welsh Parliament Environment Committee is calling on Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water and the Welsh Government to accelerate measures to tackle pollution in Wales’ waters.
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has launched a new consultation on banning wet wipes containing plastic across the UK under plans to tackle plastic pollution and clean up the country’s waterways.
Anglian Water has welcomed the Government’s announcement that it will ban sales of wet wipes containing plastic, subject to consultation.
Environmental charity Thames21 is calling for the government to make an immediate decision on banning plastic in wet wipes in order to help tackle this sewage-based pollution ending up in the River Thames.
Drainage experts Lanes Group have announced the launch of this year’s Unblocktober campaign, calling on individuals and businesses to take the Unblocktober pledge to clean drains and reduce the impact that waste is having on the climate and ecology in the UK.
“SAS (Surplus Activated Sludge) is a bit weird and can do odd things,” says Stuart Chatten, Lead Bioresources Technician at Whitlingham Water Recycling Centre (WRC), one of Anglian Water’s principal centres for processing sewage, serving a population of 400,000.
Owen Mace has taken over as Director of the British Plastics Federation (BPF) Plastic Pipes Group on the retirement of Caroline Ayres. He was previously Standards and Technical Manager for the group.
PureTec Separations, the Ledbury-based water treatment engineering firm, has appointed Dan Norman as its new Sales Manager – Water Process Systems, supporting the company’s continued growth in the UK and international markets.
bNovate has launched BactoCloud, a secure cloud-based platform that connects and manages its BactoSense instruments, enabling real-time monitoring and optimization of microbial water quality.