Learn the household items you can or can’t flush down the toilet.
With products like “flushable wipes” being sold everywhere, the line between what we can and can’t flush down the toilet is blurred. Unfortunately, flushing down the wrong items can damage our sewage systems. Use our simple guide below to learn the household items you can or can’t flush down the toilet.
Acceptable Things to Flush Down the Toilet
As obvious, you can flush toilet paper and bodily waste down the toilet. Never flush wipes, paper towels, or other paper-like materials that are not toilet paper. Since paper towels are too thick, they can cause severe clogging if you flush them down the toilet.
Non-Acceptable Items You Can’t Flush
Besides paper towels, there are harmless items that get flushed daily that can provoke problems. In addition, you might be surprised by which materials are not right for your sewage system. So, here are items you can’t flush down the toilet:
Sanitary Products
Pads and tampons aren’t meant to be flushed down the toilet and often provoke blockages. Instead, throw away your sanitary products in a trash can. Apart from containing plastic, the chemicals used in many sanitary pads also impact marine life when they end up in the ocean.
Wipes
Contrary to what you might have heard, there’s no flushable wipes. This goes for baby wipes, makeup wipes, and other cleaning wipes. Despite being made out of paper, toilets cannot break them down like toilet paper. In addition, wipes are the common forms of marine litter found on beaches.
Floss & Hair
Other items you can’t flush down the toilet are hair and floss. They produce the same detrimental effect in the sewage system when you flush them. They can also wrap around objects, clump them together, cause blockages, and damage machinery within sewage treatment plants.
Medication
Just like medicine releases into our bodies when we take it, they also release into our water supply when we flush them down the toilet. This goes for prescription and non-prescription drugs, too. So, the safest method to discard old medication is by bringing them to your local pharmacy to be properly disposed.
Plastics
Avoid flushing these items down your toilet. Diapers, contacts, and condoms cause severe backups, blockages, and overflows.
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