{"id":2547,"date":"2020-10-15T23:45:43","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T23:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/?p=2547"},"modified":"2020-10-15T23:45:43","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T23:45:43","slug":"flushable-wipes-are-a-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/15\/flushable-wipes-are-a-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Flushable’ Wipes Are a Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Beth Skwarecki<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFlushable\u201d wipes sound great, in theory. Use them like a baby wipe\u2014on your own grown-up butt, if you want\u2014but no need to toss something with a smear of poop on it into your garbage can. Just flush, and away it goes. But is this really a good idea? Probably not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The companies that make flushable wipes are adamant that they dissolve after flushing. Cottonnelle has a web page<\/a> dedicated to this assertion, stating that the wipes are \u201cmade for your pipes\u201d and that they \u201cimmediately start to break down after flushing.\u201d The page features an endorsement from a wastewater utility saying that the wipes are \u201ccompatible with our system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But wipes make up a significant portion of the \u201cfatbergs\u201d that clog city sewers. Ordinary non-flushable wipes are certainly among them, but cities including New York are suspicious of the supposedly flushable ones<\/a>. NYC\u2019s \u201crespect the flush\u201d campaign tells residents to trash all wet wipes<\/a>, whether they\u2019re labeled \u201cflushable\u201d or not. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn\u2019t call out flushable wipes by name, but they do say not to flush any type of wipe<\/a>, only toilet paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short: I absolutely would not flush a flushable wipe, no matter what the label says. <\/a>Don’t Flush Facial Tissue, Either<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in March and April\u2014those heady, early pandemic days\u2014nothing seemed more important than toilet\u2026Read more<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It only takes a little bit of reading to see a few flaws in the wipe companies\u2019 protests about being flushable. For example, Cottonelle clearly makes an effort to differentiate themselves from those other<\/em> brands of so-called flushable wipes, which aren\u2019t nearly<\/em> as flushable as theirs. This suggests that even the makers of flushable wipes know that the word \u201cflushable\u201d on a label should not be taken at face value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is the warning that you\u2019ll find in fine print on the back of some of these packages: \u201cFor best results, flush only one or two wipes at a time.\u201d So the flushability of the wipes is in fact pretty limited: one or two wipes, of certain brands, under the right conditions, may<\/em> break down. (Cottonelle tested theirs with a one-hour pre-soak and six minutes of stirring time<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So even if the wipe manufacturers are right that the wipes are sometimes flushable, that doesn\u2019t mean that flushable wipes are always<\/em> flushable. Better to stick with what cities and the EPA recommend and only flush the four P\u2019s<\/a>: poop, pee, puke, and [toilet] paper.Beth Skwarecki<\/a><\/a>Posts<\/a><\/a>Email<\/a><\/a>Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beth is Lifehacker’s Senior Health Editor. She has written about health and science for over a decade, including two books: Outbreak! and Genetics 101. Her Wilks score is 302.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beth Skwarecki \u201cFlushable\u201d wipes sound great, in theory. Use them like a baby wipe\u2014on your own grown-up butt, if you want\u2014but no need to toss something with a smear of poop on it into your garbage can. Just flush, and away it goes. But is this really a good idea? Probably not. The companies that<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t Read more<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[213],"class_list":["post-2547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-flushable-wipes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2549,"href":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions\/2549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fitadelphia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}