- [Nicole] These products all have one thing in common:
they're all labeled flushable.
Some are even touting "advanced flushable technology."
There's a lot you can physically flush down a toilet,
but despite what product labels say,
that doesn't mean you should.
- [Man] There's more clogged pipes than usual.
- [Woman] Trouble in our sewer systems.
- [Nicole] Too much of anything that isn't toilet paper
can grind our city's sewage plants to a halt.
Overall, the United States spends at least $1 billion
annually to manage the problem.
So what's going on here?
Why are we all being actively told to do a thing
that's causing so many problems?
And what toll is all this flushing
really taking in our cities?
- Oh these are nasty!
This is the worst.
- [Nicole] So what makes something flushable?
There are a few criteria.
It should be able to make it through a toilet's plumbing
without having deployed a plunger, for one.
It also has to dissolve entirely in water
before it hits the screens and propellers that pulled gunk
out of the wastewater at a sewage plant.
Otherwise it could gum up the works.
There are a handful of standards
and tests used to decide if something is flushable.
One of them is called a slosh box,
a box full of water that gets agitated.
Put a product in and see how long
it takes for it to dissolve.
So we don't have a slosh box
but we have these glass jars full of water,
which an expert said can be a decent proxy
for seeing how well different things dissolve.
So we added a variety
of products that said that they were flushable,
shook them around and left them for about an hour.
So let's see how everything did.
Well, we should start with toilet paper.
So this, yeah, it's just dissolved, mush.
Next we have the wipes.
Yeah, pulling out pretty big chunks here that
I could very easily imagine getting caught on something.
Next let's do the seat covers.
Kind of clumps up in a way that the toilet paper did not.
Then we have these cleaning pads.
Definitely not broken down.
And then we have the cat litter.
It's definitely sludge. It looks like a pile of sand left.
So I don't really know what to make of this.
(laughs)
There have been bigger and more precise studies.
One research team out of Canada
built a working model of a toilet in a lab
to test the flushability of different products,
including 23 types of wipes labeled flushable.
Only two of those wipes, even partially disintegrated.
None broke down all the way.
Meaning that if they made it through the toilet
without getting snagged,
they'd still end up floating around a sewage plant
at the other end of the line.
So how do these wipes keep getting labeled flushable
if they don't pass these tests?
It has to do with which standards
the companies are basing those claims on.
In most cases, flushable labels are based
on standards, created by groups that have close ties
to industries that make flushable products.
Not the most objective set up.
So these industry groups will call a product flushable
if it's 60% dissolved after one hour in a slosh box
rotating 26 times per minute.
A pretty low bar to clear.
But sewage plants say products that hit that bar
will still get stuck and they've got the waste to prove it.
- Yeah, this is all wipes.
It's like, I would say it's 80% wipes.
If I pick up a wipe here that's 60% degraded,
it's still here, it's still not flushable.
- [Nicole] Pam Elardo is a deputy commissioner
at New York City's Department of Environmental Protection.
She runs all the facilities that manage the city's sewage,
including this one on Randall's Island.
- [Pam] There's actually a flushability test
that we use as sewer utilities.
It's a standard test across our industry.
It mimics the flow of the treatment plants
and the collection systems where there's lots of turbulence.
- [Nicole] Pam's talking about a standard created
by the International Water Services Flushability Group,
which is made up of utilities groups,
water associations, and other professionals.
They have a different bar for the slosh box test.
For their standard, products have to dissolve 95%
of the way after half an hour at 18 rotations per minute.
A much higher bar than the 60% industry benchmark.
In other words, sewage facilities say that
much more of the material has to dissolve,
in a shorter period of time,
in order for the product to play nicely
with their machinery.
Any products that's not toilet paper
can cause havoc in the city's systems.
- They tend to glom onto each other,
so you get really, hard, concrete like structures
of wipes that even can impact our ability to mix.
They wrap themselves around the motors,
the impellers, the shafts, they break stuff.
- [Nicole] And it's been getting worse
over the past few decades.
- [Pam] We did a study on just what's caught in our screens,
which is not really most of what gets through,
plotted that against the wipes industry sales
and it's completely parallel.
Like it was manageable. It shot up.
And then since COVID, there was a big uptick
at the plant here and other places around the city.
So the consequences that is I'm spending a lot
of staff time, unplugging cleaning,
getting into pumps that are clogged
to get them to flow because of the wipe problem.
It's not a sustainable approach right now.
We're struggling.
- [Nicole] It costs roughly $20 million a year
to manage the problem in New York City.
And that's probably an underestimate.
All of that mass of wipes and other flush stuff
gets fished out and then carted off
to the same landfill it would have gone to
if people had just thrown it away in the first place.
But there are a few ways wastewater utilities
are trying to fight back.
Mikelle Adgate is the senior advisor for strategic planning
at New York City's Department of Environmental Protection.
- So back in 2019 we launched a massive public
awareness campaign called Trash It Don't Flush It,
where we wanted to really get
that terminology in people's heads.
That said, you know, when it comes to menstrual products,
when it comes to wipes,
when it comes to condoms,
and other things that people think
can clear the toilet don't flush them, trash them.
- [Nicole] The department isn't just working
on public awareness campaigns.
They're working with the city council
on legislation that would require companies to
meet the higher utility industry standards
in order to mark their products as flushable.
- Our goal is for manufacturers to actually comply
with that standard so that we can definitively say
if your product complies with this standard
then it's flushable in the city of New York.
- [Nicole] Clogged sewers are a
worldwide everywhere problem.
And it takes wastewater plants away from focusing
on the core of their jobs.
- Access to clean water and access to basic sanitation
is still a global problem.
And so when there's products on the market that gum up
and break existing sanitation measures,
then that further compounds the problem.
Whereas we should be working together to ensure
that everyone has access to clean drinking water
and to basic sanitation services.
- [Nicole] It may be possible to make a wipe
or toilet cleaner or other product that is truly flushable.
But for now, none of them are.
So for the sake of your
friendly, neighborhood wastewater plant managers,
make sure toilet paper is the only thing you flush.
- [Pam] Oh my God. Look at this one.
Like this is, it's so built up.
People who flushed their wipes
do you want to come pick
up your wipes from here please?
(laughs)
And I'm a sewer person. I think this is disgusting.