Wet Wipes Pollution

[SixtySomething]

I've just been watching a tv news item about the pollution caused by wet wipes.
Surely MN is in the perfect place to influence this and should campaign to make plastic wet wipes illegal?

YABU : MN has already campaigned on this issue/ women already know about this but prefer the convenience and cheapness of non-environmental wet wipes.

YANBU: MN should do everything it can to educate women about the environmental damage plastic wet wipes cause.

Women? Don’t men use wet wipes, too?

I hate them and think they should be banned, fwiw.

I thought it was already common knowledge that you shouldn't flush wet wipes!
Although I know there are 'flushable wipes' (which I heard on R4 that still are bad for sewage system)

We use wipes for kitchen table but these go in the bin.
We stopped using daily baby wipes when my youngest turned around 4 I suppose. We still have a pack or two for faces and in the car.

I tried to use cut up old muslins but they really aren't the same, never managed to see it through. Still have a big stack near the kitchen table just in case!

A new company called Wype (?) makes a gel that turns toilet paper stronger and can be used as a wipe then flushed. This might be a good product.

Don't men read MN?

What does this even mean?? It’s badly worded to mean the opposite of what you meant. And yes, men do read mn.

Assuming you watched the same report as I did on BBC, there is no such thing as a flushable/biodegradable wipe.

The water industry bloke was clear. If you must buy and use these things then they go IN THE BIN and not DOWN THE LOO.

when this issue arises here, there are persuasive arguments from parents of children with various special needs as to why a ban on wet wipes would make their lives harder.

A campaign against ever flushing them might be better - apart from general education maybe the companies should be required to put much clearer labelling on the packs and warnings about blockages? Somewhat akin to cigarette packs? (We’ve had a blockage in a bit of pipe shared with a neighbour caused by her flushing ‘flushable’ wet wipes)

People are stupid who still flush them, and I didn’t see the news report, but they still pollute when put in the bin.

Yes, this makes sense to be honest.

It’s only a problem if you flush them.

They need to go in a bin, when they’ll be sent along with the rest of landfill waste for incineration for energy recovery, which is incidentally what also happens to the bulk of plastics recycling.

We have had a stern letter from the water board saying that someone in our postcode keeps blocking the pipes with wipes and they are installing cameras to identify the guilty household. They say they will charge that household the cost of the unblocking, which is over 10K. I think that is the only way to change behaviour.

I think there should be a campaign against the companies who promote their wipes as flushable.

Starting with Andrex and go from there - their "you can flush up to 2 wipes at a time" is absolute bullshit pretending that it's ok.

Sadly they shouldn't have to teach common sense in schools yet here we are

But no I don't get why women are to blame

In England, only 49% of household waste is incinerated and in the rest of UK, it's 30%. So most waste still goes to landfill, where it pollutes and leaches micro plastics and all sorts of other nasty crap into the ground where it finds its way into water courses and, eventually, the sea. So it's not only a problem if you flush them.

Cloth wipes are a million times better at cleaning.

I switched to cloth when I had my youngest. They clean bums sooooo much better. I have 2 with SEN. The amount of extra washing from cloth wipes is negligible so that argument really doesn't stand.

I then switched to cloth wipes for cleaning. I don't rate j cloths or microfiber for proper kitchen/bathroom cleaning. I use old flannels because they're more rough. But I can clean the whole bathroom with one cloth and a few sprays (toilet last) or kitchen with one, as opposed to however many wipes I was using (at least 3 just for the sides).

Yes, flushing any kind of wipes is the worse problem. But there's no need for any kind of disposable wipes. (Exception for hospitals).

There's many reusable products I can see do make life a little bit more complicated but cloth wipes really don't.

And if you really think unnecessary plastic is fine because it goes in the bin, have you not read/listened/experienced anything in the world over the last 20 or 30 years??????

And it's not just toilet wipes and baby wipes. It's the unnecessary make up removing wipes, and cleaning wipes, and anti-bac wipes, and all the rest of the total nonsense products which people are conned into buying.

Flannel, reusable cloth. Those little cotton make-up removal pads. Wipes may be convenient but they are just as bad as other things containing single use plastic.

Yes, this.
My neighbours blocked the drains for the four houses in our row by using "flushable" wipes. Thames Water showed us the camera footage. They absolutely do not dissolve and shouldn't be marketed as doing so.

My neighbours blocked the drains for the four houses in our row by using "flushable" wipes. Thames Water showed us the camera footage. They absolutely do not dissolve and shouldn't be marketed as doing so.

Exactly.

Big, known, brands like Andrex advertising "new" wipes as now being flushable is going to make people think they are indeed flushable.

It's downright irresponsible marketing, and should absolutely be banned.