“An estimated 1.5bn to 2bn sanitary items are flushed down Britain’s toilets each year”
It’s sadly a common misconception that flushing sanitary products down the toilet is the best disposal method. In fact, as of 2017, Anglian Water’s investigations concluded that an estimated 1.5bn to 2bn sanitary items were being flushed down British toilets each year! This is because nearly half of all women (41%) say that they flush sanitary items down the toilet (as per Anglian Water’s survey).
This is not a sustainable number and can in fact cause numerous problems for your business and the country itself. Your businesses sewage pipes could become blocked as a result of this and a potentially costly bill for the removal as well.
According to the Marine Conservation Society, you can’t simply rely on waste treatment plants filtering sanitary waste from our sewers either. A reported 6% of Britain’s beach litter is sewage! That’s the last thing you would like to see on a trip to the beach.
To combat this, we encourage everyone to keep this slogan in mind: “Bin It, Don’t Flush It”. This is the campaign slogan that many water service company’s throughout the UK are adopting to combat the rise in sewage problems caused by flushing products down the toilet.
” Sewage-related debris makes up around 6% of Britain’s beach litter”
” It costs £88m a year to unblock the sewers maintained by our water and sewerage companies”
Of course, we can’t blame everything on sanitary products. Not by a long shot! Many other factors lead to blockages including: wet wipes, cotton wool buds, paper towels & fat/oil. We will be focusing on why you shouldn’t flush these items down the toilet in our next blog post.
Please consider getting feminine hygiene disposal products installed by yours truly or another reputable washroom services provider. The units offer a discreet way to store feminine hygiene products for later removal. Please also remember that it is your company’s Duty of Care to install feminine hygiene products if you have female employees/customers. There is strict legislation surrounding this, so please don’t get yourself in trouble by ignoring these regulations!
If you would like more information about our current feminine hygiene disposal or any other products, please get in contact with NWR Hygiene. We’re always happy to help!