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  1. #1
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    Default This is what wipes do after disposal

    Whoever considers using wipes, be it in civilisation or in the outdoors, might visit this site and reconsider:
    https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/di...er-whitechapel
    The Fatberg in the sewer system of London consisted mainly of cooking fat, condoms and wet wipes.

  2. #2

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    Gives a hole new meaning to London Underground, nasty buzzards!

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    Hold on ... a little critical thinking is in order.

    First, what sort of wipes? They don't say. Baby wipes, or flushable hygenic wipes? The latter are designed to break down, like TP (though probably more slowly - you don't want to wipe with wet TP!). The former, not so much.

    Second, what % of the problem is due to wipes? Would wipes be a problem by themselves, if there wasn't so much cooking fat? Wipes are only mentioned in passing in the body of the article. Perhaps the fat collects other waste around it and prevents it from decomposing.

    Also, with reduced water usage toilets, is waste not moving along as well as it should?

    Flushable wipes might indeed be a problem - perhaps it's a misnomer (safe cigarette, anyone?) but it's far from clear to me they're the main culprit, or a culprit at all.

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    Yeah, that was my 1st thought too. A lot of different types of wipes, & with three kids at home I've had lots of hands on experience, fairly recently. Some are far more "durable" than others.

    Heck, even some TP is strong & I'm sure will take a while to break down while others can't handle even a hint of rough treatment without falling apart starting the decay process

    that was my 1st thought......

    Then I realized as a skimmed the article..... thinking it was a write up reporting problems in the sewer system...... I realized this is about putting that stuff in a museum!!! I'm sorry, but what a bunch of idiots....those for putting it into the museum in the first place, then those that wrote about the wonderful museum exhibit. Seriously !?! I'll assume enough faith in mankind that there are no idiots out there that actually paid to go see it.....

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Time Zone View Post
    Hold on ... a little critical thinking is in order.

    First, what sort of wipes? They don't say. Baby wipes, or flushable hygenic wipes? The latter are designed to break down, like TP (though probably more slowly - you don't want to wipe with wet TP!). The former, not so much.

    Second, what % of the problem is due to wipes? Would wipes be a problem by themselves, if there wasn't so much cooking fat? Wipes are only mentioned in passing in the body of the article. Perhaps the fat collects other waste around it and prevents it from decomposing.

    Also, with reduced water usage toilets, is waste not moving along as well as it should?

    Flushable wipes might indeed be a problem - perhaps it's a misnomer (safe cigarette, anyone?) but it's far from clear to me they're the main culprit, or a culprit at all.
    This has become a huge problem in communities of all sizes. Basically "flushable" wipes are analogous to clean coal, without an accepted standard accounting not just for passing the toilet but also the town pipes. It seems they glom onto any fat (restaurants often lack proper grease traps, even if one doesn't pour grease directly down the drain) and the stuff from dishwashers reagglomerates too, and they catalyze fatberg formation. So far the companies selling these things have had better lawyers than the sewer industry (with management spread across every town) in USA.

    If you dump the wipes in a vault toilet some worker still needs to pick them out. If you do that in an AT privy a volunteer has to do it.

    But I use the things myself, to finish cleaning up, after flimsy MRE paper, leaves and such. It goes in the ziploc bag joining the Pay Day wrappers and the like, and carried out to the next trash bin accepting general solid waste. No worse than a plastic grocery bag for landfill, incinerator, etc.

    That's the solution at home too, bin the wipe. (If you don't want to look at it, buy a covered trash can.) A surprisingly simple act of individual responsibility.

  6. #6
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    Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Time Zone View Post
    Hold on ... a little critical thinking is in order.

    First, what sort of wipes? They don't say. Baby wipes, or flushable hygenic wipes? The latter are designed to break down, like TP (though probably more slowly - you don't want to wipe with wet TP!). The former, not so much.

    Second, what % of the problem is due to wipes? Would wipes be a problem by themselves, if there wasn't so much cooking fat? Wipes are only mentioned in passing in the body of the article. Perhaps the fat collects other waste around it and prevents it from decomposing.

    Also, with reduced water usage toilets, is waste not moving along as well as it should?

    Flushable wipes might indeed be a problem - perhaps it's a misnomer (safe cigarette, anyone?) but it's far from clear to me they're the main culprit, or a culprit at all.
    In the sanitary sewer collection system world, wipes are indeed a considerable problem and becoming more expensive as more people opt to use the sewer system for solid waste disposal. Depending on location, sewage pumping stations without new and expensive pumps that can grind up this material need frequent pump maintenance to de-rag pumps that clog up with these materials. Further problems are caused by the "balling" of these fabrics in areas having many sources of non-woven fabric introduction like areas with many hotels, hospitals, and nursing care centers, which cause sewer blockages and millions of dollars in damage across the US annually.

    "Flushable wipes" create the public illusion of their being well suited for sewer system disposal, however flushable does not equate to material breaking down once into the septic or sewer system, it refers to the ability of the standard toilet to transfer the material from the bowl into the piping system. The manufacturers of non-woven fabrics that make these products are reluctant to change the term used on their packaging regardless of the damage these products do to sewer system components and septic tank users.

    The problem stems from the non-natural fibers used in making these products do not break down the same way toilet paper does, so the issue is currently focused on dispersible. The standard of dispersible for sanitary sewer systems is the material has to break down (dispersed into the water) after approximately 20 minutes in solution. Baby wipes and other similar products, though makers state they are "safe" for sanitary disposal (meaning toilets), do not break down into minute dispersible bits within several days which is more than enough time for them to cause problems that affects these systems. This in turn requires removal from sewer systems manually via special machinery or by hand, which consume resources and increase costs.

    Though some manufacturers boast of their products being "biodegradable", they are not what the average person would consider to be biodegradable. Of course manufacturers can make the claim as sometime over the next 100 years or so, the product will break down if exposed to weather, so from a legal standpoint they cannot be challenged. However, this is like Volkswagen advertising their product as premier sports cars by saying, "zero to 60? Yes."

    Toilet paper is designed to be dispersible in solution and breakdown when buried even with limited water coming through the soil. When using wipes, the proper method if disposal is into the trash, not buried in a cathole or into a sewer or septic system.

  8. #8
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    Default This is what wipes do after disposal

    Thank you Traveler for a very good analysis!

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    Thanks for putting this topic in much better words I ever could.

    I strongly belive that we outdoors people could easily bring a bit of our LNT principle from the outdoors back to civilisation.
    One of the points being, to stay away from wipes as far as possible, and if not, then dispose of them in the correct (solid waste) way.

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    I'm tempted to do a little science.
    If I can make the time, I might bury samples in the edge of the woods at my backyard, some standard TP, some baby wipes, one of those little compressed coin towels, EZ Towel I think it's called, a standard paper towel. It won't be an exhaustive analysis because I won't go to the trouble of lots of different kind of wipes & TP, just what I have already.

    Then come back in a month or three and have a look.....

    Actually, I'd be surprised if someone here hasn't already done it.

  11. #11
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    Travelling around in the world for decades, I've seen my share of such real-life testruns, dug out the results, stepped on them unintentionally, and more, much more than you would like to hear.

    Even plein old TP (and the further one travelles away from high civilisation the lower the quality of TP gets (read: The better/faster it decays) until it vanishes altogether a few borders south of your home) does decay neither fast nor easy.
    Only in warm and damp environment, buried in somewhat rich soil, human feces including TP might disappear within the same hiking season.
    Count in the sheer number of people on popular trails and even given optimum conditions for decaying, the soil will soon be more feces+TP than soil.

    Now take less-than-perfect conditions like in winter where all biological processes are halted for months, or arid, dry, cold, harsh/Alpine conditions, no TP will decay, and feces will not either.
    While TP will be blown by the wind, the feces will be dug out and eaten by animals.

    So far so bad.
    But this is only the good old TP!

    Now lets talk about wipes? Coin towels?

    If you were ready to face the real truth, you might decide to fence off a piece of your backyard and try for, say, one full year, to do all your bathroom business on this spot, exactly the way you intend to do it on the trail.

  12. #12

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    Ive switched to a portable bidet and bandana. Cleaner, no waste. Less than two ounces.

  13. #13

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    Funny how the instant responses were to call bull****, and then the cooler heads prevailed.

    Pack everything out but your poop. Swallow your toothpaste. Don't use soap near streams or at all. What is so hard about that?

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by AllDownhillFromHere View Post
    Swallow your toothpaste.
    ummmm, no.
    http://www.nursingdirectorys.com/201...oothpaste.html

  15. #15
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    IMHO, toothpaste (as spit out after cleaning the teeth) is a smaller issue to the environment than using sanitizer.

    In the old (School and Military) days, swallowing a good amount of toothpaste was said to bring you to the doc and finally free you of the exercises of the day.
    While I don't belive this is still true with modern world toothpaste, I still would not swallow it routinely.
    I'm using the tiniest possible amount of toothpaste only, just enough to get a faint taste of it.
    As others here had pointed out in the past, toothpaste has zero positive medical effect to the teeth.

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