Our Bin the Wipe campaign continues to help protect homes and the environment from pollution.
Our industry leading campaign aims to help people understand the problems caused by sewer blockages containing wipes that have been flushed down the toilet.
By helping people understand that this can cause waste to back up into people’s homes, or be forced out into the environment, we hope to encourage people to put wipes into the bin, not down the loo.
When we first launched Bin the Wipe at the start of 2020, we trialled two different initiatives to see which one resulted in the most success.
In Redcar we trialled The Big Bin Giveaway where we gave customers a free bin for their bathroom. More than 50% of homes do not have bins in their bathrooms and 49% of people keep wipes in the bathroom; the aim was to make better flushing habits as easy as possible.
In Stockton we trialled Making Blockages a Moment of Change where we developed a five-stage letter process educating customers about the problems caused by wet wipes and informing them that we would be using gadgets on the network to track and pinpoint where the wipes were coming from, and we would be recharging customers for removing the wipes from our pipes.
Both pilots gave up the opportunity to engage with customers through written and face to face conversations to hopefully influence future behaviours.
While the Big Bin Giveaway pilot was a success, resulting in a 43% reduction in the number of blockages caused by wipes in the area, the Moment of Change pilot had an even greater success.
This is not only being rolled out in wipes hot spots across the North East, but has now been adopted nationally by other water companies.
Simon Cyhanko, our Head of Wastewater Networks, said: “Wipes that have been flushed down the toilet are the number one contributor to blockages in our sewers. We find them in more than 60% of the blockages we clear.
“We know not everybody in the area flushes wipes, and we thank those who dispose of them properly. However, those who do are putting not just their own homes, but those of the people who live near them, at risk of sewer flooding.”
Bin the Wipe success so far . . .
Moment of Change results in hotspot areas (to 30 March 2023)
- Sewer blockage reduction – 48%
- Internal flooding reduction – 68%
- External flooding reduction – 50%
Overall Bin the Wipe campaign results (to 30 March 2023)
- Sewer blockage reduction – 21%
- Internal flooding reduction – 86%
- External flooding reduction – 25%
This campaign continues to deliver results and is showing a marked behaviour change to our customers’ flushing habits with wipes.