Should I Flush It? Most Often, the Answer Is No | Hacker News Reader

Should I Flush It? Most Often, the Answer Is No

nytimes.com

26 pointsdigital5511 comments

I was telling my wife about this article this morning, commenting that this why we’re screwed on global warming: people have to be told not to put stretchy latex things into the sewage system. How on earth are people really expected to grasp a more complex issue like AGW?

Are people flushing condoms because they want to see the world burn? I doubt it, they probably just never gave it any thought and are understandably ignorant of how those systems work. OTOH, ladies, if we don’t know by now not to flush our tampons then you probably don’t live somewhere where tampons exist. But people still do it. So maybe people really just don’t care as long as they don’t immediately (or ever) have to deal with consequences.

> So maybe people really just don’t care

I think so. Everyone is always selfish. There are only selfish reasons. Some of us happen to selfishly feel good about helping others, but not always, not with everything, not when it's just inconvenient enough. If you want people to stop worsening the climate, you have to frame it in a way that convincingly portrays it not as something that is happening but as something that is noticably worse for them individually. Is global warming noticably worse for me individually? Not where I live at my salary. So what then do you say to convince?

> So what then do you say to convince?

There is another way. Make a religion out of it. Make it a sin to do harm to the environment.

Yet another way. Replace every ad (Google ads can be a good start) with environment friendly message, Replace all billboards with a message to drive less, drive less, or consume less generally. "Do you really need that SUV?", "Do you really need to buy a new car". Mandate by laws that companies should make stuff repairable and should provide spare parts and operation manuals. Maybe they can compensate by hiking initial price.

Fix human behavior with human behavior.

I'd counter that we're not screwed on global warming because there are many things that could counter it that don't require the average person understanding or being helpful. I mean we got rid mostly of CFCs without the average person understanding what they are or what the problem was.

> people have to be told not to put stretchy latex things into the sewage system. How on earth are people really expected to grasp a more complex issue like AGW?

And yet we can put big wads of paper and faeces in the sewage system. There is nothing logical or illogical about what you can flush, you have to be told how the processing works and what its limitations are to know.

I dunno... I was a child when I noticed that toilet paper is different from other paper, in that it degrades pretty rapidly when wet. Feces also obviously doesn't hold its shape very well. That seems fairly straightforward and 'logical', and my instinct wouldn't be to flush anything that doesn't have a decent chance of breaking up in water. Again, most kids would know that latex and rubbery things don't break up in water.

I've never looked up the way the plumbing system works and what it can handle, and was never taught much about it, but it was pretty easy to come to the subconscious conclusion that flushing is (generally speaking) for liquids, poop, and TP.

I will say that I wouldn't expect anyone to know that (as described in the article) a product explicitly marketed as "flushable" wouldn't be good for the water system. But that's a separate topic IMO: a systemic failure in providing inaccurate information vs making assumptions that don't err on the side of caution.

There is nothing logical or illogical about what you can flush

It's perfectly logical: it's either toilet paper, or it originated from your internal organs. Like I tell guests in my RV, "anything else, and you and I can have a good time with rubber gloves, a big stick, and lots of poop". It might be those on urban sewers, too, that suffer from "out of sight, out of mind". The folks I've known who have septic (myself included at various points) either knew better, or would soon learn an expensive lesson.

My 8th grade science curriculum included a pretty detailed few weeks spent on wastewater that covered everything from septic systems to public sewers; we even took a field trip out to a massive processing plant and saw how it all works first hand. At the time I don’t know that I had an appreciation for why it was a part of the curriculum, but I’m glad it was.

On a related note, “Trapped Under the Sea” is a fantastic book about a huge engineering project to manage wastewater in the Boston area that led to several tragic deaths. Great read and a great reminder of the sacrifices made to efficiently carry our waste out of sight and out of mind.

About pharmaceuticals, the article implies the only problem is people flushing mass amounts of unused pills.

Biology / medical experts feel free to correct me, but I always thought that many drugs are mainly removed from the body by being filtered into the urine by the kidneys (instead of chemically broken down in the liver or elsewhere). So wouldn't that mean a big part of the "pharmaceuticals in our sewers" problem comes from people taking pills, having the drug pass through their system and coming out when they use the toilet for its intended purpose?

Just telling people "don't do that" rarely works. I'm not going to go back to wiping my arse with paper like some kind of barbarian, and I'm not leaving shitty wipes in a bin for any period of time. Multiply that by millions (billions?).

We need to develop/commercialise sanitary materials that don't cause these sewage treatment and environmental problems, but they probably cost slightly more == less sales in the store == LESS PROFIT.

One solution is the bidet shower[1][2] that's common in Islamic and Asian countries. Nothing to clog up the sewage system and a rather civilised way to keep clean.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet_shower

[2] https://www.twogreenbackpacks.com/2014/01/17/how-to-use-a-bu...

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