Yes, ban wet wipes
WHEN my children were little I was in awe of other mothers who were so much better equipped than me. They never left the house without a knapsack filled with juice cartons, little bits of pitta bread, satsumas, small packs of raisins and batons of carrots in plastic tubs. Any indication that their offspring were hungry or thirsty and they’d be busily unzipping the bag.
If their children showed signs of boredom or restlessness on, say, a long train journey, the same knapsack would yield up an improving book (this was before the days of IPADS for infants) or a set of colouring pastels and a drawing pad.
Afterwards these paragons would clean up the kids with a pack of handy wet wipes. Somehow – so shoot me – I never seemed to have time to cut up the carrots or the pitta bread. I don’t recall my mother ever having anything nutritious in her bag apart from a pack of ancient Polo mints which always tasted faintly of her face powder. So if my lot whined about hunger or thirst I’d say vaguely – as she always said to me – that we’d be there soon so they’d have to wait.
True, I sometimes managed to pack a book or two. But if time was weighing heavily on their hands I’d tell them to look out the window and play I-spy. As for cleaning them up. If they were lucky I’d find a tissue in the bottom of my handbag. And spit on it.
Anyway it seems that parents (the virtuous ones not the negligent ones like me) are in a state of outrage at the news that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said that wet wipes would be among the “avoidable plastic waste” it aimed to banish within 25 years.
The trouble with wet wipes is that people flush them down the loo but they are not biodegradable. They attach themselves to “fatbergs” in the sewers. During a clean-up operation, 5,000 of them were found alongside the Thames in an area only half the size of a tennis court. Someone from Thames 21, a London environmental organisation, said: “The Thames riverbed is changing. Wet wipes are accumulating on the riverbed and affecting its shape. It looks natural but when you get close you can see that these clumps are composed of wet wipes mixed with twigs and mud.”
Yuk. They used to say that we were concreting over the world but instead we’re layering it with filthy, used wet wipes. And no amount of labelling is going to stop people chucking them down the loo. So let’s get rid of the horrible slimy things, pronto.
And please don’t tell me that they are essential for nappy changing or anything else for that matter. Cotton wool, water, a damp flannel. Job done.