Business Green: ‘UK water companies are urging the national trading standards body to help stamp out “misleading” labelling on disposable wet wipes that are marketed as flushable but clog up drains and litter oceans at huge environmental cost. They are calling on manufacturers of moist toilet tissues and other non-biodegradable cleaning cloths such as bathroom cleaning wipes – which are routinely flushed away by consumers in their toilets – to ensure that such products are prominently labelled as not flushable and are to be disposed of in a bin.
In a letter to the Chartered Institute of Trading Standards (CITS), Tony Harrington of the trade body Water UK urges the institute to launch its own investigation into an issue which he says is “adversely” affecting consumers and the environment. “Wet wipes and other products which find their way into our sewers are not dissolvable like standard toilet paper, but instead may contain materials which do not disintegrate in the same way that a paper-based tissue does,” he wrote in the letter to CITS head of policy, Melissa Dring. “This can lead to materials like plastics being released into the environment (similar to microbeads, a product that has received considerable media attention, and which the government has committed to ban for cosmetics), substances which we are now aware could have consequences for the human food chain.”
Harrington, who is chair of the 21st Century Drainage Programme Board, a Water UK-sponsored sector group looking at more resilient urban drainage systems, said that misleading labelling and instructions are fuelling the problem.’ Click here to read more