'Flushable' wipes are anything but, says group seeking steep fines for false advertising

Just because you can flush it doesn't mean you should.

Canadian environmental group Friends of the Earth has launched a petition against so-called flushable wet wipes. It wants the Competition Bureau to fine manufacturers for false advertising — $10 million for every product they falsely claim can safely go down a toilet.

"We often see blockages on our system," Marissa Mitton, head of wastewater operations and maintenance for the City of Calgary, told the Calgary Eyeopener.

"With any wastewater system, things get in the pipes, like tree roots grow through any of the cracks in the old pipes. And as people flush these wipes down the toilet, they may get hung up. And the problem with them is that they aren't biodegradable, they're made with plastic fibres.

"So it's not like toilet paper. When we put that down in the toilet, it disintegrates relatively quickly. These wipes, they don't break down."

Last fall, it took crews in the city of Charleston, N.C., three full days to get the Plum Island Wastewater Treatment Plant back on track after a giant, greasy blob gummed up the works. Divers waded through raw sewage to pull out three large clots of wipes.

In 2013, the Brits coined the term "fatberg" for a 15-tonne clump of congealed wipes and grease that was blocking a London sewer.

"There's no proper definition of what is flushable," Mitton said. "I was speaking to one of my colleagues at our treatment plant and she said that there's no Canadian standards to determine that flushable term."

Mitton says the city has not put a dollar figure on dealing with the blockages or "chokes" along Calgary's sewer lines, but the flushed wipes are a known "contributing factor" and an ongoing concern. She thinks the petition will spark a conversation.

"I think it is going to pose some interesting questions and hopefully help with sewer systems all over the world. Because you see this.… It's not just in Canada, it's all over the world now."

Mitton says the wipes will often snag on something as they make their way through the system. And if they don't cause a blockage, they end up at one of Calgary's wastewater treatment plants. 

"So at our wastewater treatment plants, the first stage is called the head works. It's essentially like a great big grate or a trash rack and it tries to pull out everything that people flushed down the toilet or put down their sinks that doesn't degrade. It pulls everything like that out, so hopefully they get hung up in there and then they get shipped off to the landfill."

A recent study at Ryerson University tested 23 wipes with the "flushable" label and found only two that partially disintegrated. Friends of the Earth makes the point that this is false advertising. Mitton says that because the wipes contain a high amount of plastic, they are not going to disintegrate. 

So how do city crews handle a blockage? Mitton says it starts with snaking the line, and progresses to using an auger-type tool to cut through the blockage.

"It can be challenging. It depends what is there and how hard it is packed into the pipe," she said.

"If it's in a main line along a residential street or any of our roads, we have these pieces of equipment, large trucks that look like great big vacuums. They put a hose down through the pipe, spray a whole bunch of water and then they pull it back a bit. They pull the stuff that's building up in the pipe, and then they suck that out and then they discharge it and take it to the landfill."

Other culprits include paper towels, feminine products and disposable cleaning pads.

With files from the Calgary Eyeopener.