They might be cheap to buy on supermarket shelves, but disposable wipes are costing authorities tens of millions of dollars as more people flush them down the toilet, clogging pipes and polluting waterways.

Manufacturers and sewage companies across the country are scrambling to fix the problem, fearing just one colossal blockage could cause hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage to a system already under strain.

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Michelle Cull from Queensland Urban Utilities said despite efforts to get the message through to consumers, the problem was getting worse.

"I think a lot of people just aren't aware that they shouldn't be putting wet wipes down the toilet," she said.

"A lot of the wipes are labelled as flushable but the message we are trying to get out is that just because they can be flushed doesn't mean they should be flushed."

Queensland Urban Utilities removes about 120 tonnes of wet wipes from its system every year. ( ABC News: Elise Worthington )

"We do believe it is getting worse; when we talk to our field crews that go out and work at our pump stations they are noticing a lot more wipes going through the network.

"The big issue is that wipes don't disintegrate like toilet paper does. We remove around 120 tonnes of wipes from the system every year."

And that is just in south-east Queensland.

Water Services Association of Australia executive director Adam Lovell said authorities around the country were struggling to cope.

"We are unfortunately seeing an increasing frequency of sewage blockages," Mr Lovell said.

"The problem has really exploded over the past couple of years and it's costing millions to fix up.

"Sydney Water estimates it costs around $8 million a year to fix blockages caused by wet wipes and they find 75 per cent of their sewage blockages involved wipes of some description."

Fears 'fatberg' will cause chaos in sewage systems

Mr Lovell said the ultimate blockage was known as a "fatberg", a conglomeration of fat and wipes that can cause chaos for sewage workers.

"Fatbergs are horrible – they're basically absolutely huge, tonnes in weigh ... and what happens is of course these fatbergs contain quite a lot of these wipes that make them even bigger," he said.

"The famous one from last year in London was the size of a double-decker bus.

"You've got to rip roads, you've got to rip out footpaths and parks to get these things out. They're certainly not the most pleasant thing to look at and not the most pleasant thing to smell either."

A congealed 15-tonne 'fatberg' hangs from the roof of a London sewer. ( AFP: CountyClean )

Queensland Urban Utilities worker Steve Gibson has spent two decades on the sewage frontline where giant screens separate waste at the Boondall treatment plant.

"That's probably a four-metre screen almost completely covered in wet wipes. [There's also] a little bit of corn; we always get corn," he said.

Mr Gibson has had the misfortune of seeing a fatberg first hand.

"It looks pretty ugly; it's not something you would want to put between two bits of bread, that's for certain," he said.

"It costs us a lot of money each year to dispose of these to landfill when the easiest way to deal with them is for people not to flush them down the toilet."

Mr Lovell said in the United States the problem was so big the Federal Trade Commission had stepped in.

"They've actually put the onus on the wipes manufacturers to prove that the products are flushable before they can be labelled as flushable, and that's a major step forward, and we will be looking at that here closely as well," he said.

"We've met with the various manufacturers and retailers of wipes, we are sharing information at the moment. We are also looking to set up a mirror standards committee which is coming out of the US to determine what is flushable, to put that standard around flushability."

But that process could take years, so for now Mr Lovell urges people not to use the toilet as a garbage bin.

"The implications are really quite huge right across the environment – waterways, inconvenience for roads and everything having to be ripped up – and the cost, of course, has to be passed on to the customer."