Port of London Authority, in collaboration with Thames Water and environmental charity Thames21, has completed a three-week project and removed about 5 million wet wipes that had congealed into a 250-metre island on the foreshore of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge.

Also among the 114 tonnes removed was towels, scarves, trousers, pants, a car's engine timing belt and even a set of dentures that had been trapped in the 'island'.

To remove the potentially harmful and polluting 'island', engineers on site developed an innovative 'rake and shake' method. They used two eight-tonne excavators to sift through the island, separating wet wipes and waste from the natural sediment and riverbed, to minimise the environmental impact.

In total, almost 200 cubic metres of wet wipes containing plastics and other materials were taken away in 15 skips and disposed of responsibly. It comes as the Government has published draft legislation to ban wet wipes that contain plastics.

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The island, which was about the size of two tennis courts and up to 1m high in places, had changed the course of the river and potentially harmed the aquatic wildlife and ecology in the area.

Thames21 and its volunteers have been monitoring the island since 2017. Their data and research inspired the PLA to take a lead in coordinating the removal of Wet Wipe Island, helped to raise awareness of how wet wipes containing plastic can degrade the environment and harm wildlife and helped to influence government policy.

Port of London Authority's Director of Sustainability, Grace Rawnsley, said: "After months of planning and hard work, we're so pleased to have finally been able to clear this stretch of the Thames. The reaction of local communities – and of people across the country and beyond – has been really encouraging but also slightly incredulous that this work was needed in the first place.

"As a business which reinvests all the money we make back into the river and its communities, we are proud to have been able to drive forward this first-of-its-kind project and, while at times the work was pretty gross, it was well worth it to help clean the river. We will continue innovating and investing to help secure a cleaner, healthier tidal Thames."