Disposable wipes are everywhere nowadays and they respond to a wide variety of needs – baby wipes, cleaning wipes, personal hygiene wipes. If you’re using them in your bathroom, the toilet might seem like the most convenient and logical solution for their disposal, but is that safe for your pipes? Not really.

Disposable wipes can cause serious damage to your plumbing system, as they take a longer time to break than the traditional toilet paper. Since the fabric in wipes is more durable, they stay in the plumbing system longer and gradually start mixing up with other particles, such as paper bits, grease, or other flushed waste. This may lead to clogs or even backups. In extreme cases, much bigger problems can arise. If the accumulated bundle doesn’t disassemble in your drain pipes, it will continue to flow and only grow in size. Eventually, this cluster solidifies and turns into a rock-like mass known as a ‘fatberg’. Once it gets into your main sewer line it represents a risk not only for your home but even for the whole sanitation system.

Additionally, wet wipes can even cause damage to the wastewater equipment. They commonly get stuck in the sewage pump or bound around it. Inside the pump, they can grab on the impellers and cause the pump to burn out. Furthermore, wet wipes can overwhelm and break the valve seals or clog the discharge pipe. They add friction to the pipes, which causes erosion and results in leakage – serious health and environmental hazard. Also, some brands of wipes contain alcohol which kills the bacteria and enzymes in charge of degrading solid waste in septic tanks, which only adds to the problem.

Even if wet wipes are labeled as flushable, that doesn’t mean they are safe for your plumbing system. Flushable wipes may be easily ‘flushed’, but they can still cause problems down the line. Furthermore, because some wipes may be ‘flushable’, people start believing they all are and this results in improper disposal on a colossal scale. Recently, a large number of lawsuits have been brought against disposable wipes manufacturers who mislead with this label, so hopefully, there will be some improvement regarding this issue in the near future.

Since the turn of the century, wet wipes have caused headaches for plumbers around the world. They have been appealing to people to refrain from flushing them. Thus, if you do use the disposable wipes and care about your home and neighborhood, dispose of them somewhere else.

 

For more information about disposable wipes and how they can affect your plumbing, contact Vinny’s Jersey Plumbing, located in Wayne, New Jersey.  We also service other towns in New Jersey, such as Montclair, Livingston and West Orange.