Why would I call when I have the internet.
The City of Dayton: Do not dump cooking grease and oils down sinks or toilets. This practice will cause house laterals and sanitary sewer mains to develop a build up and eventually cause a stoppage. Also, female sanitary products and disposable diapers should not be flushed. They should be securely wrapped and placed in a trash receptacle.
She can do whatever the hell she wants as far as I am concerned but there is household plumbing between the toilet and the sewer that could very well not handle a tampon. As I said a while ago, until I had my plumbing redone earlier in the year, it would have very likely caused a backup at my house.
The local systems and laterals would be communities with pumping stations connecting Milwaukee and individual houses.
Hey! Me too! Go old Indiana!
Just for the record - my house was built in 1887-ish. My last apartment was built in 1900-ish.
I’ve always flushed.
As long as she’s not fucking up the pipes, yeah. I’m just sayin’ in a lot of places it WILL fuck up the plumbing and she won’t necessarily get notice on the fact. Kudos to Milwaukee that they’re that progressive, but everywhere I’ve lived I’ve been told don’t flush anything not bodily waste.
Just for the record - like I’ve mentioned, I’m on well and septic, and do much of the maintenance around here. I’m paranoid about dumping stuff down the drain. Not just tampons - I examine every cleaner in the house to make sure it’s OK for our system.
King County Washington, home of Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, etc., says no tampons or Kleenex should be flushed.
Tree roots invade pipes all the time. Until the pipes are completely compromised, you can get by for a long time without having to replace them. It’s not a trivial thing to do, and the roots will continue to grow back; it’s a continuous process. Ours cost us $6000 last weekend. You will not know if your tampon is causing a problem often because it takes awhile for the blockage to become complete. Liquid waste will still seep through and it can be days before the solids back up enough to become apparent in the home (particularly if the blockage is 20 or 30 feet out.) Knowing now what I do, I would never ever risk screwing up someone else’s system.
Women who use Diva Cups have to deal with bathroom stall unpleasantness all the time. What’s the big deal with changing tampon habits?
Call them and ask them specifically about tampons marketed as flushable. “Female sanitary products” could mean “pads, wrappers, and applicators, but we’re too lazy to enumerate all those things, so we’ll just use a catch-all phrase.”
Dumping menstrual fluid out of a cup designed to contain it into a toilet and then wiping it out with a bit of TP is the same thing as pulling out a saturated tampon, having it drip and smear all over, wrapping it in a huge wad of TP, and hoping there’s somewhere convenient to throw it out? Oooooookay.
I pitched my tampons that way for years before I learned they were flushable. Don’t tell me it’s not a huge pain in the ass compared to the 100% ease of pulling out a tampon and letting it drop straight into the bowl, because I know of what I speak.
(Bolding mine.)
I didn’t. I implied the opposite. Try reading again.
They’re non-biodegradable interwoven fibers. If they were readily biodegradable you couldn’t use them.
Here is yet another municipality explaining it to you:
**
Avoid flushing sanitary napkins, tampons, disposable diapers, condoms, or other non-biodegradable products into your sewage system. **
I have a house full of products with marketing bullshit on the box. the laundry detergent doesn’t get grass stains out. The toothpaste doesn’t whiten my teeth. My car doesn’t get better mileage with the new and improved oil.
Magiver, there are tampon companies that are claiming that their product is biodegradable. Are you suggesting that we should assume that is a lie? If we assume such a bold-faced lie, then how can we trust any product that claims to be biodegradable.
I’m asking these questions seriously.
marketing can be wordsmiths and weasels.
what (in the case of tampons [wrapper, applicator, string, some of the absorber, your menses]) and when (in what decade or century) and how (is it degradable in the environment it would likely be left in) need to be quantified.
biodegradable material (food, paper) has been pulled up intact after being buried for half a century in a landfill, in another situation it might be gone long before then.
marketing and politicians are word weasels.
There are? Really? Who’s claming to be biodegradable? Haven’t seen that box yet … could toss one into the compost pile to check the claim, and report back to y’all in six or eight months.
(No snark meant - I’m genuinely curious.)
Well, I just googled and found a bunch. Here is the FAQfor a company called Natracare that claims to be biodegradable.
I’m just asking Magiver because I want to be sure we aren’t holding women up to some standards about their tampons that we aren’t holding every other consumer up to about anything else. If a woman says, “hey, I flush because the packaging is telling me it is ok to do so” I hope that woman isn’t expected to assume the packaging is lying and do a ton of research, unless everyone does that about all kinds of things that they take for granted based on the packaging.
You asked “What’s the big deal with changing tampon habits?” I told you what the big deal is.
Please point to anywhere that *I *said they were biodegradeable. You didn’t quote me saying it because I never did. They probably are, eventually, in the right conditions (which, like most of our trash, they’ll probably never see), but I *don’t *think they break up in the pipes. I *do ***know **they eventually get filtered out, with the other debris, by the part of the sewer system that is designed to do so.
Good thing I don’t live there, eh? Good thing *I *called the *MMSD *and *they *told me it causes *no *damage to their systems and is *not *a problem.
Maybe next you can try to convince me to cover myself to the ankles and wrists when I leave the house so I don’t get acid thrown at me. After all, if it happens somewhere else, it’s clearly relevant where I live, too!
But if the laundry detergent dissolved your pipes, the toothpaste made your teeth fall out, and your car blew up from the oil, you bet your ass they wouldn’t be making those claims anymore (or even still be on the market). *That *would be the equivalent to “tampons are *universally *destructive when flushed.”
Oh, and I just re-read your “cite,” and noticed something odd about the phrasing–it said “sewage system.” Hrm, that’s odd, I thought. It’s like they’re talking about a septic tank, which is entirely different from when I’m talking about it being okay to flush tampons. So I checked your link. And you know what? THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT SEPTIC TANKS.
So, thanks for posting a cite that proves absolutely *nothing *about what we’re actually debating here. **No one in this thread **has said that it’s okay to flush anything other than bodily wastes and TP into septic tanks.
My plastic clogs claim to be biodegradable. The term has a very broad meaning. Obviously, cotton fabric will biodegrade over enough time, as my scrap towels will testify to. But that’s not the same as dissolving in a plumbing system.
Wait. So now we can’t flush them OR throw them away? This is problematic for my leaky vagina, sir.
The only solution is to eat them. Then you can shit them out and no one will bitch about them going down the toilet. Solves any issues with anemia, too!
But then your poop’s going to be all cottony and clog the pipes. Stop being hateful toward plumbing, bitch! 