Top Things You Should Never Flush Down a Toilet

Toilets weren’t designed to flush anything and everything, and while they may look robust enough to tackle everything, the plumbing won’t handle it. If you end up flushing the wrong items down, it will totally wreck your plumbing, cost you thousands in repairs, and create environmental disasters.

Sometimes plumbers extract some truly bizarre things that clog up pipes, and most of these problems could’ve been avoided.

Flushable wipes

The label might say ‘flushable,’ but these wipes don’t break down as toilet paper does, and they cause massive clogs in both home pipes and city sewer systems. They’re made from synthetic fibers that stay intact for months, clumping together with grease and other debris to form blockages the size of cars in municipal sewers.

Plumbers consistently rank these as one of the top causes of expensive service calls, even though the packaging makes them sound perfectly safe.

Cotton swabs and cotton pads

Cotton products don’t dissolve in water; they actually absorb it and expand, making them perfect for creating stubborn clogs. A single cotton pad can catch other debris as it moves through your pipes, building up into a blockage that requires professional removal.

Dispose of cotton items in the trash instead, where they belong with other personal care items.

Dental floss

This thin string seems harmless, but it wraps around other objects in your pipes and creates nets that trap everything else flowing through. Floss is also non-biodegradable, so it persists in the sewage system and can tangle in treatment equipment.

It takes just two seconds to drop it in the trash, which is infinitely cheaper than calling a plumber to snake your drain.

Hair

Hair clumps together into dense masses that combine with soap scum and other gunk to form nearly impenetrable blockages. A single shower’s worth of hair might not seem like much, but it accumulates over time and can completely shut down your drain.

Use a drain cover to catch hair and throw it away; your future self will thank you when you’re not pouring chemicals down a backed-up toilet.

Paper towels and tissues

These products are designed to stay strong when wet, which is the exact opposite of what you want going down your toilet. Unlike toilet paper, which disintegrates within seconds, paper towels can take weeks or months to break down and often clog pipes long before that happens.

Facial tissues fall somewhere in between, but still cause enough problems that they should go in the trash.

Cooking grease and oils

Grease might be liquid when it goes down, but it solidifies as it cools in your pipes, coating the interior and gradually narrowing the passage. Pipes are similar to arteries, and grease has a similar effect on pipes.

With time, the build-up will clog as flushed items pass through the caked-on, greasy passageways, leading to major blockages. Severe blockages can affect your entire neighborhood’s sewer line.

Rather, allow the grease to cool in a container and throw it in the garbage.

Medications

Flushing pills introduces pharmaceuticals into waterways that treatment plants can’t fully remove, affecting fish and other aquatic life. These chemicals can also end up back in drinking water supplies in trace amounts, creating potential health concerns.

Most pharmacies and police stations have medication take-back programs that safely dispose of expired or unwanted drugs.

Cat litter

Similarly to the ‘flushable’ wipes, cat litter marketed as ‘flushable’ is not really flushable. These particles expand when they get wet and turn into a concrete-like substance in your pipes.

Cat waste also contains parasites like Toxoplasma that survive water treatment and can harm marine ecosystems, contaminating the water. Bag it up and put it in the trash; that’s what garbage services are designed to handle.

Condoms

These latex products don’t break down and can easily cause clogs, especially in older plumbing systems with narrow pipes. They’re also a nightmare for wastewater treatment facilities, where they have to be manually removed from filters.

Wrap them in tissue and throw them away discreetly in the trash.

Band-aids and bandages

The adhesive on bandages makes them stick to pipe walls, where they collect other debris and create blockages. The plastic and fabric materials don’t decompose, so they persist in the sewage system indefinitely.

They’re small enough to fit in your pocket until you find a trash can, so there’s really no excuse for flushing them.

Food scraps

Toilets aren’t garbage disposals, and food waste can clog pipes or create foul odors as it decomposes in your plumbing. Items like rice and pasta continue to expand in water, making them particularly problematic for creating stubborn blockages.

Compost food scraps if possible, or throw them in the trash, just keep them out of your toilet.

Diapers

This one seems obvious, but people still try to flush diapers when they’re desperate, and the results are always catastrophic. Diapers are designed to absorb and hold liquid, so they swell up in pipes and create instant, total blockages.

They belong in a sealed bag in the trash, period.

Contact lenses

These tiny pieces of plastic don’t biodegrade and pass through water treatment systems into rivers and oceans, where they break down into microplastics. Researchers estimate that billions of contacts end up in waterways each year, contributing to plastic pollution.

Drop them in the trash or ask your eye doctor about recycling programs.

Paint and chemicals

Paint can cause havoc on your plumbing, and still, sometimes people find it easier to dispose of it via the toilet. While flushing paints might be easier, it’s not always worthwhile, and it becomes expensive plumbing work.

Keep latex paint, paint thinners, and household chemicals out of the toilet. Just like latex paint, paint thinner, and household chemicals, these substances contaminate water supplies and can damage the beneficial bacteria that treatment plants rely on to process waste.

Many of these substances are also corrosive and can eat away at your pipes over time. Take hazardous materials to designated disposal facilities; most communities have free drop-off days several times a year.

Convenience sometimes comes at a high price tag

The few seconds you save by flushing something inappropriate can turn into hours of dealing with a backed-up toilet gunk and hundreds or even thousands of dollars in plumbing bills. Your toilet connects to a complex system that depends on everyone using it correctly.

Just one person’s carelessness can cause problems for an entire neighborhood. Keep a small trash can in every bathroom, and you’ll never be tempted to flush something that’ll come back to haunt you.

The trash can is always closer than the plumber.

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