A major environmental campaign urging the public to bin all wipes and calling on governments to ban those made with plastic has been launched by Scottish Water.

The Nature Calls campaign features attention-grabbing animated adverts that will play across multiple channels, including TV, cinema, radio and social media.

The campaign is backed by organisations including the Marine Conservation Society, WWF Scotland and Zero Waste Scotland. The public can get involved by backing the ban, adding their name to the supporters list or by sharing campaign news on social media.

Douglas Millican, Scottish Water chief executive, said: “Our message to our customers is clear: please bin the wipes and help us protect the environment. And to policymakers we say now is the time to ban all wipes containing plastic and rid our sewers, rivers and beaches of this needless problem.

"Last year, more than 10,000 tonnes of material – the equivalent of 80 blue whales - was removed from Scotland’s wastewater plants. Many thousands of tonnes more ended up blocking sewers, causing flooding, or being flushed into rivers during storms and heavy rain.

“Wipes are an understandable convenience item - but many contain plastic, that causes serious problems when disposed of inappropriately by flushing down the toilet - blocked sewers, homes flooded with sewage, and pollution on our beaches and rivers.

“Members of the public, communities, campaigners, manufacturers, retailers and governments must all work together to do the right thing for nature now and for generations to come.”

Backing the campaign, Scotland's environment minister Mairi McAllan said: “We support the calls to ban wet wipes containing plastic and encourage the UK Government and other administrations to work with us to bring forward bans on unnecessary and environmentally harmful products.”

Lang Banks, WWF Scotland, said: “At every step in its lifecycle, even long after it has been discarded, plastic causes harm to wildlife and contributes to the climate crisis we’re facing today.

"If we’re to stop climate change and eliminate plastic pollution from our oceans, we need to rapidly phase out unnecessary single-use plastics and that includes a ban on wipes made with plastic."

Did you know?

• Research by the Marine Conservation Society shows that wipes are now the most common cause of beach pollution
• In the UK it is estimated that 11 billion wipes are used every year
• 90% of wipes contain plastic, which when broken down leads to microplastic in the environment.
• Scotland suffers 100 sewer blockages every day, 80 of which are caused by things that were not meant to be flushed down the loo - almost all of these are wipes
• So not flushing wipes can really make a huge difference.

https://www.jointhewave.scot/