Tag Archives: flushable

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR TOILET PAPER.

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Paper towels, Kleenex, and flushable wipes are not substitutes for toilet paper. Toilet paper is designed to dissolve in water. Paper towels, Kleenex, and wipes hold together when they get wet. If you flush these products, in little time, you could find it impossible to flush your toilet. Getting a plumber to fix that could become difficult – and expensive. Despite their name, ‘flushable wipes’ are not flushable. I have written about this subject periodically in my tenant newsletter over the years. Flushable wipes cause an enormous amount of damage every year to people’s plumbing and to city sewage treatment plants. Flushable wipes and paper towels combine with kitchen grease (something else you shouldn’t flush) in sewer pipes to create ‘fatbergs.’ Some fatbergs weigh tons and can only be removed by tearing up a street. One especially large fatberg in a sewer line in London was bigger than a city double-decker bus. There’s a picture below of a fatberg that weighed over a ton. As you probably know, some people are buying huge quantities of toilet paper right now, but toilet paper is not sold out everywhere, and the price of it is not going up. I saw people at Costco with huge quantities of toilet paper in their carts – and nothing else. If these people were afraid that necessities were going to become unavailable, and they were thinking rationally, they would have bought food too, not just toilet paper. However, that’s the nature of panic buying. It’s never rational.


WHY ARE PEOPLE HOARDING TOILET PAPER?

As soon as this epidemic began, stories began circulating on social media web sites claiming that most of the toilet paper used in the U.S. is imported from China and that because China shut down its factories, the U.S. would soon be running out of toilet paper. Through Facebook and Twitter, these stories were repeated countless times. This led to the panic buying of toilet paper that we see today. However, the United States does not import toilet paper from China. Over 90% of the toilet paper sold in the United States is made in the United States. The rest comes from Canada and Mexico. The United States is net exporter of toilet paper, and we export a lot of it. The United States is the 3rd largest exporter of toilet paper in the world. This panic buying of toilet paper is not China’s fault. Take a look at the toilet paper in your home. You will probably never see a package of toilet paper in your life that says: “Made in China” on it.

Have You Ever Heard of a ‘Fatberg’?

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fatbergLast month, I had an article about flushable products in this newsletter. Somebody who read that article suggested that I look into ‘fatbergs’. Although I think I have a fairly good vocabulary, I had never heard the word ‘fatberg’ before. A fatberg is a congealed lump of kitchen fat and flushable products. Flushable products are products that manufacturer claims are safe to flush but which do not dissolve in water like toilet paper. Fatbergs have been found in sewer pipes all over the world. They are often round and get bigger as more and more flushable products become incorporated in them, much the same way that a snowball gets bigger as it rolls downhill. Fatbergs can clog up even the biggest sewer pipes. In New York City, a fatberg weighing 10 tons was removed from a sewer pipe. Try to picture that – a hard round ball made up entirely out of kitchen fat and used baby wipes and sanitary napkins and weighing 10 tons. How would you like to have the job of removing something like that from a sewer pipe? Major cities all over the world are spending huge sums of money removing fatbergs from their sewers. Recently, a fatberg the size of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet was removed from a sewer in London! Below is a photo of an 8 ton fatberg that rolled into a turn in a sewer pipe in Sydney, Australia, sealing off the flow of sewage. I have been looking at photos of fatbergs on Google images, and I must admit that some of them look strangely beautiful. Of course, I am looking at them at a distance. I strongly suspect that fatbergs are not as pretty to look at (or smell) up close.

The word ‘flushable’ has no legal definition. Right now, any manufacturer can say that any product is ‘flushable.’ I think Congress should create a legal definition for the word ‘flushable’ just as they did for the words ‘organic’ and ‘gluten-free.’ To repeat what I said last month – never, never flush so-called flushable products.

Don’t Use Your Toilet As A Waste Basket.

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Tossing bits of personal care products down the toilet may seem harmless. After all, there is a big drain hole under the toilet and most stuff immediately disappears when you flush it. However, just because a piece of dental floss that you threw in the toilet vanished when you flushed it doesn’t mean that it made it all the way to the sewer line under the street. It is possible that it got caught on a joint or elbow or something else in the drain line under your floor, and because dental floss doesn’t dissolve in water, it can catch other things going down the toilet until your toilet isn’t flushing at all. Remember, if a plumbing repair is the result of your misuse or abuse of the plumbing, your landlord can make you pay for that repair. When a Roto Rooter man cleans out a clogged toilet line, the hooked blade at the end of his snake brings back whatever it was that caused the clog. It is quite often dental floss. If the stuff that clogged up your drain line could only have come from you and shouldn’t have gone in your toilet in the first place, you will have to pay for that Roto Rooter visit, and those visits can be very expensive. The ONLY thing that should go in your toilet aside from human waste is toilet paper. Do not flush paper towels. Toilet paper is designed to disintegrate in water. Paper towels are designed to hold together when wet. Do not flush tampons. Some of the worst toilet clogs are caused by flushing tampons, especially the kind with a string in the middle of it. As I said, if you are flushing anything but toilet paper, it could cost you a lot of money! Also, flushing stuff that shouldn’t go in your toilet is very bad for the environment. Separating out non-biodegradable junk at sewage treatment plants is a huge expense for water districts everywhere.

IS IT SAFE TO FLUSH FLUSHABLE PRODUCTS?

The short answer is No. There are a lot of products sold in supermarkets that say ‘flushable’ on the label, including facial and baby wipes, cosmetic applicators, and cleansing cloths. In 2014, Consumer Reports tested a variety of wipes that were labeled ‘flushable’ and concluded that it isn’t safe to flush any of them. Here’s a short video from Consumer Reports explaining why: Are They Really Flushable? You should put flushable products in your trash can, not the toilet. As I said before, the only product that is safe to go in your toilet is toilet paper.

AREN’T FLUSHABLE PRODUCTS GUARANTEED?

Yes and No. Nearly all flushable products are guaranteed not to clog up your drain line; however, these guarantees are virtually worthless. All they say is this – if our flushable product clogs up your drain line, we will refund your purchase price. Now what does that mean? It means that if you pay $3 for a package of flushable wipes, and you flush them, and they get stuck in your drain line, and you have to to pay a plumber $300 to get them out, and you complain to the manufacturer about this, then they will send you a refund check for $3 – the price you paid for the wipes. They may also send you a letter of apology, but that is all they are going to send you. They won’t pay your $300 plumbing bill. None of the manufacturers of flushable products will pay your plumbing bill if their products clog up your drain line. And if you complain to the supermarket that sold you the wipes, you probably won’t even get your $3 back. The most you will likely get from them is a sympathetic letter from some faceless vice president in charge of health and beauty products telling you to take your complaint to the manufacturer. So remember – when you flush flushable products, you do so at your risk, not theirs.