A U.S. congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce has voted to send legislation demanding “Do Not Flush” labels for consideration in the Senate to combat the improper disposal of wet wipes that clog pipes.
Introduced in spring 2023, the Wastewater Infrastructure Pollution Prevention and Environmental Safety Act (HR2964) is now with a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
If passed, implementing the wipe warning labels would ultimately rest with the Federal Trade Commission, which could apply penalties to offenders.
The actual warning label may not state “Do Not Flush” but instead depict a symbol representing the action, such as a person throwing a wipe in a toilet with a diagonal line struck through. The symbol is determined by the most recent edition of the Guidelines for Assessing the Flushability of Disposable Nonwoven Products published by the Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry (INDA) and the European Disposables and Nonwovens Association (EDANA), or an otherwise equivalent symbol adopted by the Commission through rulemaking under the bill.
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The bill applies to wipes sold in round canisters, flexible film packages, rigid tubs and bulk packages. Wipes refers to products such as antibacterial wipes and disinfecting wipes, or those intended for personal care use on the body, such as makeup removal.
According to the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), it is estimated that North American businesses and households spent some $2.5 billion on personal wipes in 2019. By 2020, the NACWA projected that wipes created additional operating costs of about $441 million per year. That “conservative” estimate was based on data collected from 25 water utilities in 19 states.
In 2022, Canada’s Competition Bureau was unable to definitively determine whether claims of wipes being “flushable” were misleading.
