Britain's beaches are becoming clogged up with wet wipes as people increasingly flush them down the lavatory.
Marine conservationists have said the number of wet wipes found on beaches has risen by around 50% over the past year as people use them instead of toilet paper, in baby changing, to remove make-up and to apply fake tan.
The Marine Conservation Society's latest annual "Great British Beach Clean" survey of more than 300 beaches showed a 6.4% rise in beach litter in general between 21013 and 2014.
The charity revealed 2,457 pieces of litter were collected from each kilometre (0.6 mile) of coastline cleaned, up from an average of 2,309 in 2013.
Within that, an average of 35 wet wipes were retrieved, up from 23 on the previous year.
Many people do not realise that what goes through the sewers may end up in the sea.
Gill Bell from MCS told Sky News: "You don't want to put anything down your toilet other than the three Ps - pee, poo and paper.
"Nothing else needs to go down the toilet. A lot of those other things contain plastics and plastics can remain in the environment for years.
"Not only do they remain in the environment, they break down into smaller and smaller pieces so they affect animals from the bottom to the top of the food chain."
The plastic in wet wipes, which stops them disintegrating like toilet paper, also causes blockages in the sewage system - and once those blockages happen everything else flushed down the toilet can back up into people's homes or overflow into rivers and seas.
Other strange objects found on the beaches during the survey included a colostomy bag, a plastic hand, a piping gun nozzle, a bra strap and, on one particular beach, nine pairs of shoes of various sizes.
The charity's call for a national marine litter action plan comes as the Prince of Wales attended a one-day long conference in the US and called for action to halt the dumping of plastics - by far the greatest source of pollution in the sea.
Prince Charles said: "I was horrified to learn that, according to recent research, we collectively allow as much as eight million tonnes of plastic to enter the oceans every year.
"Today, almost half of all marine mammals now have plastic in their gut and I know I am not the only person haunted by the tragic images of seabirds, particularly albatrosses, that have been found dead, washed up on beaches after mistaking a piece of plastic for a meal.
"The fact that a recent study estimates that by 2025 there will be one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish in the sea is not what I call encouraging.
"Speaking as a grandfather with a new grandchild due to appear in this world in a month's time, I think we probably owe it to everyone else's grandchildren to grasp that solution."
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