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Derbyshire flooding: Wet wipes and sanitary towels litter river banks

Peter Astle Volunteers cleaning River Derwent banksPeter Astle
Volunteers who clean up the River Derwent's banks after flooding have said wet wipes and sanitary towels flushed down the toilet litter the riverside

Flooding in Derbyshire has left river banks littered with sanitary towels and wipes flushed down the toilet, a volunteer clean-up team has said.

Peter Astle leads a group of kayakers and canoeists in cleaning up the banks of the River Derwent after flooding.

During floods some waste water is redirected to the river to stop people's homes being inundated.

But Mr Astle says the knock-on effect is non-flushable items being deposited along the river banks.

A Severn Trent spokesman said: "Our system's designed to stop customers' homes being flooded during times of heavy rain.

"It does this by redirecting the waste water, which is mainly rainwater, to a nearby river or stream to stop it becoming overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of flooding."

But as a result non-perishable items, like baby wipes and sanitary towels, get caught in foliage on the river bank.

Mr Astle, 51, said it took nearly a year to clean up the river banks after the Derbyshire floods of 2019.

The Peak UK Kayaking director said: "We started doing regular clean-ups by canoe or kayak and remove all sorts of things, from road signs to masses of hay bale lap when the hay bales got washed into Matlock Bath back in 2019.

"Certain trees, spiky trees, become Christmas trees for this sort of debris for stuff that's been coming out of the sewer."

Peter Astle Peak paddle kayakers cleaning up the river banksPeter Astle
The team of volunteer kayakers and canoeists work in teams to clear the debris

He believes residents should be made more aware of the problems caused by throwing non-flushable items down the toilet.

"What we're really keen to do is hit the source of this," he said.

"The solution isn't us cleaning it, the solution is not flushing it in the first place."

Severn Trent has said it removes two and a half tonnes of wipes from its sewers every week.

Spokesman Gareth Mead said: "Wipes are one of the biggest problems we're dealing with at the moment.

"They're everywhere these days - baby wipes, floor wipes, face wipes - and people simply don't think before dropping them into the toilet."

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