Competition bureau probing makers of ‘flushable’ wipes
OTTAWA — Canada’s Competition Bureau is digging into complaints that companies that market “flushable” wipes are making false claims about their products.
Friends of the Earth Canada and EcoJustice, on behalf of six individual Canadians, filed a complaint earlier this year about companies that use the flushability claim, after a Ryerson University study found nearly two dozen wipes labelled as “flushable” did not break down after being flushed.
Although the Competition Bureau won’t publicly confirm any investigations, the complainants say bureau officials recently told them an inquiry is proceeding.
The complainants are asking for the bureau to order the companies to remove all claims that their products are flushable, issue public retractions, and clearly label their products with “do not flush” instructions. They also want a $10-million fine for each product.
Barry Orr, a city sewer outreach and control inspector in London, Ont., has been working for more than six years with both national and international organizations of sewer operators to try to get a standard in place for what wipes can be called “flushable.”
To date those efforts have failed: municipal sewer operators want one standard, and a corporate organization representing the makers of the products has a different one.
Orr co-wrote the study through Ryerson, which tested 23 products labelled as “flushable” and concluded none of them fully disintegrated after being flushed. The report, released in March, concluded that two of the wipes partially broke down but the other 21 remained fully intact.
Canadian municipalities estimate it costs them at least $250 million a year to remove giant sewer clogs, known as fatbergs, that form when wipes and other solids that don’t disintegrate get glued together in the pipes by substances such as kitchen grease.
One of the biggest ever reported was found last February in Liverpool, England. As of July, workers were still trying to extricate the 400-tonne, 250-metrelong fatberg from a city sewer pipe.
Orr said private homeowners have also been hit with thousands of dollars in repairs after wipes clogged their own pipes.