'Flushable' wipes (and mop heads) plugging up Whitehorse's sewage system
Clearing sewage blockages caused by wipes, paper towels and even mop heads is costing 300K a year
The City of Whitehorse says changing consumer habits are causing a lot of grief for sewage workers.
Gabriel Lefebvre, assistant manager of Water and Waste Services, says items such as disposable wipes, feminine hygiene products and paper towels are plugging up sewage pumps more often than in the past.
He says items described as "flushable" usually aren't.
"It's not necessarily the size, it is that they don't degrade the same way as toilet paper would," he says.
"They basically just jam up in our pumps and we can't get them out and with more wipes coming in, it just creates a huge backlog."
The jams have to be manually cleaned out and Lefebvre says that's costing the city as much as $300,000 a year.
Lefebvre says people have even been flushing mop heads into the sewer system, although he's not sure how they're doing it.
He says disposable items should be going into the garbage, with the exception of paper towels which can be composted.
with files from David Croft