“An estimated 1.5bn to 2bn sanitary items are flushed down Britain’s toilets each year”
It’s sadly a common misconception that flushing sanitary products down the toilet is the best disposal method. In fact, 2.5 million tampons, 1.4 million pads and 700,000 panty liners are flushed daily, costing around £100 million each year due to blockages! This is because more than half of all women do not know that shouldn’t be flushed, and many who do know continue to do so anyway!
This is not a sustainable number and can in fact cause numerous problems for your business and the country itself. Your business’s sewage pipes could become blocked as a result of this and a potentially costly bill for the removal as well.
According to the Marine Conservation Society, you can’t simply rely on waste treatment plants filtering sanitary waste from our sewers either. A reported 8.6% of Britain’s beach litter is sewage! That’s the last thing you would like to see on a trip to the beach.
To combat this, we encourage everyone to keep this slogan in mind: “Bin It, Don’t Flush It”. This is the campaign slogan that many water service companies throughout the UK are adopting to combat the rise in sewage problems caused by flushing products down the toilet.
” Sewage-related debris makes up around 8.6% of Britain’s beach litter”
” It costs £100m a year to unblock the sewers maintained by our water and sewerage companies”
Of course, we can’t blame everything on sanitary products. Not by a long shot! Many other factors lead to blockages including: wet wipes, cotton wool buds, paper towels & fat/oil.
Businesses should consider getting feminine hygiene disposal products installed. The units offer a discreet way to store feminine hygiene products for later removal. It is also important to remember that it is a company’s Duty of Care to install feminine hygiene products if you have female employees/customers. There is strict legislation surrounding this, so don’t get yourself in trouble by ignoring these regulations!
If you would like more information about our current feminine hygiene disposal or any other products, please get in contact with NWR Hygiene. We’re always happy to help!
