WET-WIPES wrongly flushed down the toilet are an expensive environmental headache, causing fatbergs and backflowing from drains, ending up in rivers, the sea, and coating beaches – but a team of researchers at Málaga University has found a way to turn this neverending problem into something useful.
Non-biodegradable disposable wipes washed up on La Misericordia beach in Málaga's Huelin neighbourhood. Researchers in the city's university say they can be turned into activated carbon, for industrial and medical use (photo: @HuelinTV on Twitter)
The first-ever Mares Circulares ('Circular Seas') award, granted by Coca-Cola and totalling €5,400, has been presented to the group led by Professor Francisco Franco, head of mineralogy at the university, to help fund a project to turn wet-wipe waste into activated carbon.
Usually sourced from charcoal, activated carbon is a more porous type and has numerous uses in industry and medicine, ranging from purifying water to pumping the stomachs of patients who have taken overdoses or consumed toxic substances.
“Wet-wipes are a bigger problem for Málaga's coastline even than plastic waste,” says Professor Franco.
Once they are cleared out of the sea, off the beaches and out of sewage plants, they will go through a complex micro-chemical synthesising process to turn them into this coal-like substance for use in removing micro-biological pathogens and other polluting particles from water, the investigation team explains.
The Mares Circulares project run by the global soft drinks company in Spain and Portugal seeks to fund work on cleaning up coastal areas, sea-beds and other 'watery' areas, such as rivers and marshes, as well as raising public awareness of the need to do so in the fight against climate change and to protect biodiversity, and finance training, research, and start-up companies focused on the circular economy, or reusing and recycling waste material.
Other recipients of 'Circular Seas' awards include a study on plastic waste in the river Ebro in Arguedas, at the entrance to the Bardenas Reales nature reserve in Navarra, the Malla OPS study on fishing nets, and the 'best start-up' candidate, Futuralga SCA, based in the Andalucía province of Huelva.
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