As humans, we’ve adapted to recycling, composting and thinking about what we’re throwing in the bin. However, chances are, you don’t think when it comes to what we flush. You can cause a lot of harm by using your toilet as a handy bin, as items end up blocking your toilets system, causing it to overflow and, in the long run, threatening the safety of our water supply.
We’ve put together a list of the top five things you probably flush, but definitely shouldn’t, and how it can wreak havoc in your bathroom.
Dental Floss
Though it’s small, thin and delicate, dental floss is not biodegradable. As more and more gets flushed away, it can easily become tangled together, as well as wrapping onto anything it can find, and thus creating chaos as it makes its way through the sewer pipes. The best way to avoid the problems dental floss can cause is to simply throw it away in the bin.
Human Hair
So many of us often make the mistake of ensuring our hairs don’t go down the plug hole after a bath, only to remove it and flush it anyway. Longer hair especially can easily get caught in the machinery of septic system pumps. Hair combined with other materials, floss included, can effortlessly block pipes.
Wet Wipes
Even if they say they’re flushable, it’s likely they’re still doing the damage. These wipes are creating clogs and backups within sewers around the country, as they fail to disintegrate as easily as normal toilet paper. Unless you want to deal with the consequences of a blockage, it’s best to stick to binning these, rather than flushing.
Tampons
Tampons have a hard time breaking down when they have been flushed into our sewers. Though it could take months or years for them to clog up and accumulate, they will still end up blocking our drains and toilets, which in turn will need to be unblocked by hand. Discarding these via the bin is your best bet.
Fat, Oil & Grease
After cooking, you may not know where to dispose your fat, oil or grease, but the toilet certainly isn’t the place to do so. It’s actually illegal to dispose of this via your loo, and up to £15 million per year is spent clearing these kinds of blockages. If you’d like to dispose of fat, oil or grease correctly, you simply need to soak it up with kitchen towels and bin.
If you’ve noticed your flushing habits haven’t been up to scratch and it’s caused a blockage, we can help. To find out more information, contact the Happy Drains team by visiting our Contact page or by giving us a call on 0800 849 8099– we’d love to help!
