The Surprising Link Between Your Toilet and a Healthy Planet
In celebration of Earth Month 2025, RFA would like to take the opportunity to remind everyone that our flushing habits have a direct impact on the health of our planet, and understanding this impact is the first step toward protecting our shared future.
What Happens When You Flush the Wrong Things
First, think of the plumbing system in your neighborhood as a network of pipes, all carrying wastewater away from homes and businesses to treatment plants. Now, picture a major traffic jam on the highway. That’s essentially what happens when a blockage forms in a sewer pipe.
Non-flushable items (anything other than toilet paper and wipes labeled as flushable) do not break apart in water. Instead, when they’re flushed, they clump together in pipes and cause these blockages. That’s why things like wipes labeled with the Do Not Flush symbol, period products like pads and tampons, paper towels and other items need to go in the trash and never the toilet.
The Consequences of Clogged Pipes
When pipes are blocked, the pressure within them increases as wastewater continues to flow toward the blockage but can’t pass through. The pressurized wastewater must go somewhere, so the weakest point in the system gives way.
This can look like manhole covers popping off and releasing raw sewage into the streets, sinks and floor drains overflowing with wastewater in homes, pipes cracking underground and leaking wastewater into surrounding soil and groundwater and more.
This raw sewage — now in the streets, in your home or in the soil where your food grows — is a cocktail of harmful substances like bacteria, viruses and even parasites. Sewage can also contain chemicals from household products, industrial waste and pharmaceuticals.
These substances can not only cause harm at the point of leakage, but also make their way into waterways like rivers, lakes and oceans — disrupting marine ecosystems and damaging plants and wildlife.
The Impact on Wastewater Treatment Plants
What’s more, if non-flushable items make their way through the pipes all the way to wastewater treatment plants without causing pipe-bursting clogs, they can still wreak havoc once there.
Non-flushable items can get caught in the intake pumps that push water through the system, causing costly damage, slowing down the treatment process and even increasing energy consumption as struggling pipes try to maintain flow. Such complications can compromise the wastewater treatment plant’s ability to protect public health and the environment.
What the World Looks Like When We Do and Don’t Flush Smart
As an example, a common misconception is that baby wipes are flushable – this is not true. Baby wipes are never flushable. New parents, however, can use more than 1,000 baby wipes per month! Even flushing just one baby wipe can cause clogs and blockages where raw sewage can back up into a home or cause a sewage overflow into the environment. As we mentioned, if it makes it to the wastewater treatment facility, the long, often synthetic fibers of baby wipes can tangle around equipment causing expensive repairs.
When we do flush responsibly, we support community health and the vital work of wastewater treatment plants in removing pollutants and contaminants before releasing treated water back into the environment. This helps protect our rivers, lakes and oceans, preserving aquatic ecosystems and ensuring clean water sources for drinking, recreation, agriculture and more.
Protecting our planet is a collective effort, and even small changes in our daily habits can make a big difference. This Earth Month 2025, let’s commit to protecting our planet — one flush at a time.