UK's Single Use Plastic Ban May Include Wet Wipes

I looked around but I couldn't find whether this includes all sorts of damp wipes such as baby wipes or others or is it just ones used more generally for cleaning.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...astic-pollution-plan-single-use-a8340836.html

I wonder if this will spur new products or just make people miserable?

These kind of laws are always interesting in that the government wouldn't be eliminating the product if the consumers didn't flush them through the toilet and into the sewer system. I saw an earlier argument against wet wipes because they combine with the grease in the sewer system, completely stopping up the sewer pipes forming one giant mass. It is a big problem apparently.

I wouldn't really mind this. It's absolutely a problem. Wet wipes should be replaced by some more effective type of wipe. Otherwise, the risk of environmental impact is too high.

Um. When I was a baby, my mom just used old wash cloths for that. She'd get them a little damp, put them in a plastic baggy and take them with us. When it got dirty, it went into the wash with the rest of my diapers. (I was a cloth diaper baby. :3)

This isn't the first 'fatberg' they've had to clear, so I'm not surprised the government is looking at eliminating wipes. If the parents had to go down and bust that toxic mess apart, wiping their babies bum with a tissue would be a walk in the park.

Ah, yes; this movement comes hot on the heels of an effective ban on tasty non-alcoholic drinks with the new Sugar Tax (and, no doubt soon, tasty food; you can already sense many foods are becoming blander).

To be honest, I agree with a plastic wipe ban even though I have a great reliance on the antibacterial ones for personal hygiene. The big But, though, is that a ban would only make sense if fabric conditioner were also banned, for as we know too well, it's just a nasty, dirty gunk which stops cloths absorbing moisture and harbours germs and its use therefore renders cloths unusable for wiping and cleaning.
Having a bit of commonsense, I could adapt, but what about everybody else (since stupity and bodily dirtiness are on the increase)?

That article rather misses the point. There are many kinds of cleansing wipes - some contain plastic, some don't, so a ban on single-use plastic products doesn't correspond directly to a ban on wet wipes. The trouble at the moment is getting consumers to recognise the difference between the different kinds. Cheap, strong, baby wipes usually have non-biodegradable polymers and strong resin binders; they work well for the user but are not so good for the enironment. True biodegradeable wipes are typically more expensive to buy and not as strong in use, although new manufacturing methods are closing the gap. Banning the use of plastics would push more R & D into the enironmentally sustainable versions and boost their sales, in turn making them cheaper and better.

There was an outcry when legislation come in to restrict the power of domestic vacuum cleaner motors; uninformed people were saying that if it took longer to clean the house with a less powerful cleaner, it wouldn't save energy. What the legislators knew was that manufacturers were saving money by making less efficient motors and fans, that consumed way more power than actually needed to give the correct amount of suction. New cleaners can have just as much suction, but the legislation has stopped lazy, inefficient designs reaching the market. The same can be true of wipes - we could probably have luxurious soft wipes that were completely biodegradeable, if people would stop taking the easy way out and using plastic.

As for the sewer issues, again there has been a lot of hype here. For every newsworthy fatberg there are a thousand private drains blocked with fat that hasn't travelled 10 feet from peoples' kitchens. Since the beginning of sewers, there has always been a need to clean fat, silt and debris out of them, which used to be done by human effort on regular patrols. Not nice work and now mechanised for the most part, but the financial pressure on water companies has probably reduced the maintenance below the necessary level. Flushed wipes do get stuck in fat and on screens and contribute to the need to clean sewers, but again it's usually the 'wrong' wipes that should never be flushed.

That's what I was thinking. A ban on plastic polimer wet wipes does not equate to a ban on all wet wipes.

I think the ban on wet wipes and baby wipes is stupid. People should just know or learn not to flush them. The packaging should mention DO NOT FLUSH!

If I no longer have access to Pampers Sensitive I'm just going to have to revolt somehow. Life would literally be unliveable.

12srepaid said:

I think the ban on wet wipes and baby wipes is stupid. People should just know or learn not to flush them. The packaging should mention DO NOT FLUSH!

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Unfortunately, when too many people ignore the suggested behaviors and everyone starts to suffer as a result, rules have to be made to stop people from being selfish asses. It's like why we have to have huge fines for parking in handicapped parking places.

Don't blame the lawmakers for things like this, blame the idiots that made these kinds of laws necessary in the first place.

12srepaid said:

I think the ban on wet wipes and baby wipes is stupid. People should just know or learn not to flush them. The packaging should mention DO NOT FLUSH!

Click to expand...

The packaging DOES say that. But no-one reads it, apparently.

Tribal housing have several flyers they put out regularly and one about not flushing any wipes and certain other items pops up from time to time. We have a little trashcan near the toilet with a foot-operated lid that we toss the wipes and other non-flushables into. It's not too hard and as long at it is changed regularly, it doesn't stink much.

I know that even in El Salvador, you can't put toilet paper in the toilet. I've been there four times, and that was hard not to do.