To not understand how you can be so ignorant and unaware of the world around you that you still flush wet wipes and tampons down the toilet?

[A580Hojas]

How is it even possible in the information age?

I reckon a huge number of people know they shouldn't do it but flush anyway in the hope they will get away with it and they won't be the one having to dig out any resulting blockage.

Much like the hundreds of thousands of cunts who chuck their litter out of car windows - out of sight out of mind.

Gets me down, it does.

I thought my periods were heavy!

That sounds awful. Can't you get help/medication if periods are v v heavy? My friends DD does.

Is it more environmentally friendly to be putting 5 or 6 plastic bags filled with bloody tampons into the bin every day? Also, bags cost 5p each now, I'm not sure I want to waste money on that.

They don't break down which is why they shouldn't be flushed. They join up with fat and form fatbergs in the sewers

Oh I didn't know my outrageously heavy bleeding was just because I'm ignorant. Obviously. Wonder if that'll change now?!

Lady I just thought the same.

I mean seriously, on such every day items, who the fuck stops to read the leaflet when you know how it works?

Do the uppity twats bemoaning others ignorance read the entire leaflet before taking a paracetamol every time for instance?

Tampons do fall out. When soaked through and heavy. Nothing to do with pelvic floor.

Tampax box

The OnlyLiving - when I started using tampons it said ON THE LEAFLET to flush them. Was I supposed to read the leaflet every month in case something changed? Do you read the leaflet every time you open a box of paracetamol that you've used hundreds of times before in case something changed?

I have never read a newspaper article telling me not to flush tampons. There may have been an occasional one but it certainly wasn't anything that came to my attention.

I very very rarely use public toilets so no I didn't see those signs. The toilets at work just had sanitary bins which I'd always been told were for sanitary towels.

Scottish water puts it on Facebook here too

We had septic tank when I was young and never flushed. I flush them now if I'm in a public loo and the sanitary disposal unit is broken and minging and very occasionally in the middle of the night as i dont want to go downstairs to the bin.

It's also ridiculous to say that people are uneducated, I'm sure this thread will in fact make people look at what they do but we can only know what we know. I try and be environmentally friendly so I used reusable nappies, have metal straws, use a mooncup until I flush it away and generally do my best. But I also drive a diesel car because when I bought it I was unaware of how bad they are for the environment, have previously flushed countless tampons and used many, many dettol wipes, it's much more helpful to gently nudge people in the right direction than start an angry thread about us uneducated cunts.

I have known most of my adult life that there were 3 things you could put down the loo. Pee, paper and poo. Tampons do not biodegrade, although they do break down a bit. Sanitary towels and panty liners do not break down. Cotton buds do not break down.
I bought bum wipes last year and it said flushable on them. They won't break down and should not be flushed.
Condoms will not flush.

And why do people leave the tap running when they brush their teeth?

Like this

I haven’t looked at a tampon box for 20 years. Recently I bought some weird pearl things that need to be clicked into shape and had to refer to the the leaflet to see how to use them and still only read the relevant paragraph. Why would anyone examine the box of phamplet regularly?

I'm another one who never heard of this except on MN, as had specifically been told, many moons ago, that tampons WERE flushable.

And tbh, for the heavy part my period, I don't see how I could possibly catch and bag it - it is absolutely soaked and dripping, and the avalanche of stuff that comes out with it...I had to stop using a mooncup because I could not remove it without getting blood absolutely everywhere, and I got sick of washing the loo/bathmats/surround area every single time I had to change it. Doing that in someone else's house, or in a public loo, was absolutely totally out of the question.

Have just been on the tampax website. I had to dig around quite a bit to find that recommended disposal is wrap up and put in bin.

Yes, no option. What if there is no bin, and you have no bag

Well I don’t know about anyone else but there’s this magic thing called common sense in that if you are on your period then you take the necessary things out with you if there’s a chance you may need to change your tampon.

I didn’t know til I knew from a thread on here! I’m 36, the box (and my mum) said to flush them. So I did. And I never read the box or leaflet ever again.
But now I bin them.

Dd uses nappy bags for her sanitary towels. I just tend to wrap in toilet roll and bin

I flushed my dead goldfish down the toilet a few years back. Should have watched the news to stop me being so ignorant because they frequently have 'what you should/shouldn't flush in their headlines

A580

I’m 99.99% certain that you’re ignorant of and take no personal responsibility for something far more serious than whether tampons are flushable or not. Is your carbon footprint 0? Do you leave absolutely no trace of your existence on planet earth? Hmm?

Jesusholymotherofgod

They're not very very heavy. Sometimes i flood on the first day and if that happens the tampon tends to fall out as i sit down on the loo. If i put in a high absorbancy one and don't flood then it hurts to pull it out.

I can't get a tampon very far up so it's always hovering round the entrance. There's nothing wrong with my pelvic floor.

I wonder if you ever drive a car or fly OP as you might be doing your fair share of damage to the environment.

I also hold my hand up to being ignorant about tampons. Haven't used the things for years but when I read not to flush them on a thread here it made me think back to the start of secondary school twenty or so years ago. We had a Tampax sponsored talk and they definitely said a plus to tampons was that they were safe to flush. I wonder when that changed and how long it will take to stop marketing 'flushable' wipes.

I agree, definitely shouldn't flush anything that's not toilet paper or human waste. However, I didn't know tampons weren't flushable either until recently.

Just a PSA: it is possible to educate people without being a sanctimonious tit about it. How fucking wonderful it must be to know absolutely everything about the whole entire world. One way to help people to learn is to create an environment where they're not scared to ask questions. Those of you berating people for not knowing something are making it harder for people to learn because they'll be too scared to ask.

It costs nothing to be helpful.