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Cristina Pinto
Malaga
Monday, 11 November 2024, 11:17
Residents living near La Térmica in Malaga city woke up to their beach covered in hundreds of used wet wipes on Sunday 10 November.
"I've never seen the beach like this before," said Enrique Romero, who lives nearby. "Yesterday [Saturday] I saw it here and today when I returned, I saw that it was still as dirty. It is unbelievably full of rubbish," he added.
Despite the mess, tourists took advantage of the good weather and strolled along the beach, with some even choosing to swim. SUR also went to the beach and can verify that hundreds of the wipes and other rubbish were strewn across the sand.
This newspaper contacted Malaga town hall about the mess. "Workers have been cleaning up the debris from the storm all week, but tomorrow, Monday, they will come back to clean up the whole area," the council said.
Wipes washing up on beaches continues to be a problem in Malaga. According to Emasa, the city's main water company, in 2023, more than 2,300 tonnes of solid waste was recovered from toilets in 2023: mostly wipes. Even though many labels say they are biodegradable, most wipes are not. In many cases they take 600 years to decompose and, even if they break down at first, they can still join together and cause serious environmental problems and blockages in sewage systems.
In 2023, the council removed 2,341 tonnes of solid waste from the city's wastewater, which is 1.2% less than the 2,368 tonnes collected in 2022. These figures have been improving. In 2018, it was 3,056 tonnes, which dropped to 2,973 and 2,490 in successive years.
To try to reduce waste, Emasa has in recent years installed more filters at pumping stations to remove as much waste as possible before it reaches treatment plants.
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