Parents want to change wet wipes ban

♦ Parents have reacted with dismay to government plans to ban wet wipes and have called for a viable alternative before they are outlawed.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said wipes containing plastics would be banished by 2025 to prevent them clogging up sewers, damaging riverbeds and harming marine life.

But many parents and charities took to social media claiming the problem lay with the “fools that flush them” rather than the products themselves.

Charities said they hoped the ban would push firms to develop ecofriendly wipes. Mike Childs, of Friends of the Earth, said: “If we can develop the technology for driverless cars, surely we can design a way of keeping our kids clean without plastic.”

Defra said it aimed to work with manufacturers and water companies to develop a non-plastic product.