To keep your home drainage system – and your local public sewers – flowing freely, be very careful what you flush down the loo. Here’s our list of the top ten items that should be disposed of in other ways.
1. WET WIPES
You should never flush away wet wipes. They don’t disintegrate easily. It’s estimated that 75% of drain blockages are caused by wet wipes. Even though the vast majority of people say they care about the environment and the cleanliness of our rivers and seas, over 1 in 5 of us admit to flushing wet wipes down the toilet. There’s a big campaign to Bin The Wipe!
2. COTTON WOOL OR OTHER COTTON PRODUCTS
Cotton balls, cotton pads, and cotton buds are definitely not safe to flush – again they don’t break down the way toilet paper does, and just clog up your pipes.
3. SANITARY PRODUCTS
Tampons and sanitary pads are designed to absorb large amounts of fluids. So putting them down the toilet, even if you’ve torn them into smaller pieces first, is just going to cause a very unpleasant blockage.
4. NAPPIES
The same goes for disposable nappies. Being made of absorbent materials, they’ll just continue to swell when they’re inside your pipes, and quickly cause a problem.
5. CONDOMS
Condoms aren’t bio-degradable, because of the chemical additives in the latex. So flushing them could cause long term blockages in pipes and septic tanks, or they could end up in our rivers and oceans.
6. PAPER TOWELS & TISSUES
These are made from different paper to toilet paper, so they won’t break down the way toilet paper does. Dispose of them in your bin instead!
7. MEDICINES
Don’t flush away pills that you haven’t taken. The active ingredients could end up in the water system causing untold environmental damage.
8. CIGARETTE BUTTS
Cigarette butts can clog up drains. And all the toxic chemicals they contain will be transferred into the water supply.
9. FATS, OILS, AND GREASE
When these cool and solidify, they can cause “fatbergs” which can block even the largest sewers. It’s actually illegal to allow them into the sewerage system.
10. HAIR
When clearing your bath or shower plughole of hair, or removing a clump of hair from your hairbrush, to get rid of it by flushing it down the toilet. But don’t! Hair is great at getting caught up in all kinds of awkward places and then trapping anything else you flush.
Of course if you do have any problems with blockages, give us a call straight away at Happy Drains!
