The UK's beaches are becoming increasingly littered with wet wipes that people are flushing down the toilet, conservationists have warned. <\/p>\n
The number of wet wipes found in the Marine Conservation Society's annual ''Great British beach clean'' increased by some 50% in a year as more people use them instead of traditional toilet paper, to remove make- up and to apply fake tan, the charity said. <\/p>\n
The annual survey also revealed a 6.4% increase in overall beach litter between 2013 and 2014, prompting the charity to call on the Government to do more to tackle rubbish in the country's seas and on its beaches. <\/p>\n
More than 300 beaches around the UK were cleaned and surveyed by 5,349 volunteers over a weekend last September, with 2,457 bits of litter collected for every kilometre of coastline cleaned - up from an average of 2,309 in 2013. <\/p>\n
The most commonly-collected type of rubbish was pieces of plastic, while 10% of the litter collected was plastic drink bottles and aluminium drinks cans and 11% was related to commercial and recreational fishing. <\/p>\n
Volunteers also found some unusual items including a colostomy bag, a plastic hand, a piping gun nozzle, a bra strap and, on one beach, nine pairs of shoes of various sizes. <\/p>\n
An average of 35 wet wipes, which do not disintegrate when flushed down the toilet, were found for every kilometre of beach cleaned in 2014, up from 23 of the little square cloths per kilometre the previous year. <\/p>\n
MCS beachwatch officer Charlotte Coombes said the UK's sewers were not built to cope with wet wipes - which have also been causing a problem elsewhere in the world. <\/p>\n
''When flushed they don't disintegrate like toilet paper, and they typically contain plastic so once they reach the sea, they last for a very long time. <\/p>\n
''They can cause blockages in our sewers and then everything else that has been flushed down the loo can either back up into people's homes, or overflow into rivers and seas. <\/p>\n
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