A growing number of people are trading in toilet paper for moist wipes in the bathroom.
The influx of wipes that are being flushed down the toilet is causing issues at sewage treatment facilities across the country – and the Monadnock region is no exception.
Jason Beckwith, Jaffrey’s plant manager, said wipes have become a problem at the facility within the last few years.
“We went online in 2009 and we didn’t really have a problem,” Beckwith said. “But now we are doing it [cleaning out pipe blockages] almost weekly. Before it was just once a month, but it’s increased quite a bit.”
He said wipes are the biggest contributor to blockages.
The problem, experts say, is that while wipes can be ground into smaller pieces, most never disintegrate completely.
“Toilet paper will disperse in a matter of seconds, but some of these wipes will not disperse even after three hours of agitation,” said Ray Gordon, the septage coordinator for the state’s Department of Environmental Services.
Gordon said that wipes were once only used for babies but have since burgeoned into a billion-dollar industry. Manufacturers have found a market for the product by altering the size, texture, design or by infusing lotion into the product. These wipes are now marketed as baby, adult bathroom, makeup remover, cleaning or specific medicated wipes, which are sold to a wide range of consumers.
Gordon said wipes are often poorly labeled, some products advise consumers to dispose of the item properly, while others use small print to inform users not to flush the products down the toilet. In certain instances, some companies even claim their product is flushable.
The non-woven fabric companies that make wipes have lashed back at the claims that wipes are causing an issue.
A release published by INDA, the Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry, says companies touting their product as “flushable” make up about only about 7 percent of the market. It contends many products read “disposable,” a word that does not advise users to flush the product.
The association also says clogged pipes are a result of people flushing a whole slew of other items down the toilet that don’t belong, not just wipes.
“They [wastewater operators] erroneously believe that banning or fining ‘flushable’ wipes is the solution to their problems with excessive debris in their systems,” an INDA document says.
Operators do say that people have long flushed a whole slew of products down the toilet that cannot be treated by sewer or septic systems, including dental floss, paper towels, plastic bags, tampons and cotton swabs, to name only a few. Facilities are designed to pass and remove small quantities of non-flushable items, which are eventually sifted out at the treatment facility.
Nate Brown, an operator in Peterborough, said much of the time wipes, and other items, pass through the pipes with no issue.
While most of the stuff goes through with no issue, there’s one pump at the facility that does back up because of the wipes. Brown said about every few months employees have to open the pump and pull out pieces of the product with a pair of needle-nose pliers. It’s a tedious process that takes about two and a half hours to complete every time it occurs.
“If we could get it out in one piece, we would,” Brown said. “But we end up pulling bits and pieces out.”
Gordon said the state has started a concerted effort to inform the public about the issue that is costing facilities time and money to remedy. The bottom line, he says, is that only human waste and toilet paper are flushable.