Don’t let tissues be your issue or wet wipes be your gripe

During these unusual times, SA Water is reminding people to only flush toilet paper, pee and poo down the toilet, and no other products.

SA Water’s General Manager of Customers, Strategy and Innovation Anna Jackson said flushing anything other than the three Ps can lead to the awful, inconvenient and potentially costly experience of a sewer overflow.

“In the current situation we’re all in, we understand people are trying to conserve their toilet paper use and are perhaps starting to use another household item to clean up,” Anna said.

“Unfortunately, flushing things like tissues, paper towel, wet wipes or newspaper down the toilet can lead to problems for both you and our crews, because unlike toilet paper, which is deliberately designed to break down in around 30 seconds, these other items don’t disintegrate in the sewer system.

“Wads of them can build up behind another foreign object in the pipe, such as tree roots, or get stuck in congealed fats and oils to form a blockage or ‘choke’.

“Chokes can occur in our mains or your internal plumbing, and more often than not result in everything in the pipe breaking out into the environment or unfortunately coming back up through your toilet or drain, requiring a plumber or one of our crews to clean up the mess.”

Some objects make it all the way to SA Water’s wastewater treatment plants, and over the past few weeks, some of the utility’s treatment plant operators in metropolitan and regional parts of the state have seen a rise in the volume of unflushables coming through.

“We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year removing items from our wastewater treatment plants and sewer networks which don’t belong there and taking them to landfill,” Anna said.

“If you must resort to using any unflushable items, then follow the lead of some of our overseas friends and have a small bin in the toilet or bathroom for easy disposal.

“Keeping the sewers healthy is a shared responsibility, so we’ll keep doing our part through ongoing sewer main cleaning and replacement programs, and using various technology to inspect the pipes and help predict where a fault may occur before it can impact the community.

“If you do experience a blockage or overflow within your internal plumbing, contact a licensed plumber to investigate further. If your plumber decides the fault is within our infrastructure, they will contact our Customer Care Centre to have the problem fixed.”

Contact:

Phone:

Email: