You may not realize it, but flushable wipes are one of the most contentious products of the modern era: there have been oodles of morning talk show segments devoted to uncovering whether or not they really are as flushable as their name makes it seem. Now, one Brooklyn dentist has had enough of these games.
Dr. Joseph Kurtz, a 35-year-old dentist based out of Flatbush, is suing the makers of Cottonelle and Costco-brand wipes in Brooklyn federal court over unflushable flushable wipes. He says he had to spend $600 on plumbers to clear his backed-up pipes: "They do not break down as manufacturers advertise," the lawsuit states.
It seems as though the city agrees with Kurtz: NYC Department Of Environmental Protection Deputy Commissioner Vincent Sapienza says the city spends nearly $18 million a year to collect and discard debris caught in wastewater-treatment plants, most of which are flushable wipes. "The increase in clogs and problems we’ve been having in New York City—it seems to almost correlate directly with the increase in sales of these flushable wipes," Sapienza told the Post. "They make it all the way to the plant and they just wrap themselves around our equipment."
"They’re gumming up our works," he said, adding that most of the wipes come from the Upper East Side north of 72nd Street and the western side of The Bronx. "Our guys are continually having to take pumps apart because they get clogged. We stopped being surprised, but it’s a lot of work."
For some more context: things got so bad in upstate Bemus Point because of the wipes, sewer officials set up basket traps in pipes to figure out which households the wipes were coming from, then started directly appealing to those households. So you should definitely start throwing away your wipes, lest you want to bait the city into wipe-shaming you.
