Lunch with Pippa Hudson, and now Consumer Talk featuring Wendy Nola.
Wendy with us in studio today for a conversation that is going to be primarily focused on the scourge of baby wipes that end up in our stormwater systems as we interrogate claims of biodegradeability. So welcome and Wendy looking forward to that. But first you've got a very happy update for us on Philip's long battle to get to see his granddaughter in Ireland.
Yes, I cannot over state our happy. This news made me probably second only to Philip, because I've been talking to him every day pretty much since we since last week. So yes, at that stage he knew that his visa had been granted, but of course it's useless unless it's in your actual passport, and his passport had to be courier hit to him in Virginia West, in the Northern Cape,
and by yesterday he didn't have it. He the company that VFS, the company that's mandated to do the applications process, they gave it to FedEx, and after that FedEx said that'd given it to another company, wouldn't tell him who that which company it was, so it was on the phone phone. Long story short. He phoned me because he had to leave his home yesterday and around lunchtime to overnight in George and then fly to joe Burg and
then on to Dublin today. And so he had to leave at one o'clock and two hours before he still didn't have the passport, Propper, And then he phoned to say he located It was with a courier company in George. They it had been languishing in Durban and went there by mistay, I know, can you believe it? Anyway, he had to go to George, as I say, and he picked it up. And today he sent me a photograph,
which I requested. And I didn't think with the whole Russian drama of it all, he'd remember, but bless him, he sent me a photographer from holding his passport.
So he's on his way this evening. What a relief, but what absolutely just in attitude. It is infuriating, Wendy. And as we were just discussing, the infuriating part is there's nothing we can.
Do about total powerlessness. Powerlessness.
Yeah, that's what I mean, Philip, was you know, every touch point that as the days went by, it became more and more urgent, and it was the case of don't call us, we'll call you. Of course we won't and just leave it at that, and even with me agitating on the VFS side, and it was like, oh, the person who can answer to this is a way, you know, just abroad and.
The level of service speaks to their awareness of the fact that they hold all the power in this relationship.
It really is very obvious.
Yea.
Anyway, so is a happy a very close call by ours literally, but Philip got his passport with Visa Intact and off he goes and we wish him a very very happy trip to Ireland, Wendy. The other story we want to follow up on is one that came in last week. Tyrone sent us of WhatsApp about being affected by an unexpected spa closure and I think rather than let me summarize it, let's just replay for you what Tyrone's message sent.
To us OBE. Can we take a listen to that clip please.
And says I booked a spa day at the spa on zieven Wacht State. I booked for the fourth of booked on the fourth of July and paid my nine hundred and ninety nine rand. They emailed me to confirm and check our requirements for lunch. That was on the fourth of July. On the ninth of July, received an email to say there will be no more treatments. The business has been sold. And then what do we do now?
Because this is the letter that he was sent. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we've had to suspend all services until further notice. We sincerely appreciate your loyalty and support over the years. We're in the process of selling the business and therefore cannot commit to any future bookings possible refund I'll be communicated in due course. Thank you for your
understanding and patients. What does one do possible refunds? They took a booking five days before announcing they were selling the business.
Shocking, It's totally unconscionable.
They had to know that that that of course they would not honor that book character.
So what does Tyrone do?
You send me an email with all the details and I very nicely try and get told of this.
That Infinity Wellness SPA.
Okay, thanks for that Obi now he did indeed, and we also Tyrone wasn't the only one you heard from Ellis, who's sent me a follow up what's at this afternoon? Also very concerned and poor Ellis spent three nine hundred round on a SPA voucher just two weeks before the business sent out that's sorry, we're closing email. So in exactly the same position as Tyrone Wendy, you've had some further engagements in the past week.
Tell us what happened, sure, so, sevan Wacht directed. Denise Johnson contacted me to share some background on the issue back when I'm not sure the pronounce if.
I'm mutila, I think it was.
There's some of the letters dropped off here which had recently branded as Infinity. She said, had least the premises on the estate since twenty sixteen. While the estate was or where that they were experiencing difficulties, mainly because they were behind in their mental payments. They'd undertaken to pay back the areas and business was expected to pick up after the rebranding, and it came as a complete complete surprise, Denise said to us last week when they announced the
immediate closure of the SPA. I think the management and booking staff did not expect the closure and it seems they were also taken by surprise. She said, we will do everything that we can to assist the guests to obtain a refund. I think it's important to note here that there are a completely separate entity.
Not owned for us. They were renting space.
Yeah, So Denise later got back to me to say, I've had a very positive meeting with a potential new SPA operator. If they're enter into an agreement with us between the two companies that's the news Spa and Zevena, we will attempt to honor all bookings that have not been refunded. As I have no access to the database or list of guests, we are keeping a record of
all inquiries that we receive. So I sent her Tyrone and Ellis's details, so those are on the list, and I think we can say that's that's a pretty good glimmer of hope.
Well, I think that's very decent and a very nice attitude.
Very decent of them, because neither nor the new Spa owners have any obligation. Now, it wasn't their promise, it wasn't them taking the money, but the fact that they would like to restore the good will and restore that service that was promised, I think is fantastic. So well done to Zevinvacht and let's hope the new SPA operator who comes in will continue with that attitude of honoring the book. Book and the main thing here is to
let them know if you are impacted. So we have Tyrone and Ellis's details and those have been passed on to Zevin Vacht. Here's another one, Colleen saying we bought a wiki deal's couple's massage but had not yet made a booking. Colin, please send us an email. You can mail it to straight to Wendy or you can mail it to me if you prefer, if that's easier. And we were forwarded onto Zevinvach to add you to the list of those that they know they need to try and accommodate.
Or in Colleen's case, she could go to that platform and she would be entitled to the value of what she paid for that voucher to be used, and that's how those deals work, to be used on another offer and it could be valid for three years because it's a prepaid voucher would be valid for at least three years, So that's another option for her.
Okay, so Colleen, you either go back to Wiki deals and say they can't honor this one that I bought.
Can I get a.
Equivalent value in sane vouchers to spend, or if you would like to try and get onto the list to be reaccommodated at the new SPA value venue, please do pop me easiest tos pop me an email Pippa h at Cape Talk dot co dot z and we'll make
sure it reaches Zevinvacht. And if anybody else listening is in the same boat of having had a booking at the whether it was still when it was called Baquena or when it was rebranded as Infinity Spa, the one on Zevinvacht estate which has now closed, and you wouldn't we're not able to get a refund, Please let us
know so that we can pass that information on. Zevenbach does not have access to the booking information that that vacating SPA would have been in charge of, so it's imperative that you reach out to them because they're not able to reach out to you. I hope that's clear, and Wendy, thank you very much for following up. I hope that that is going to be a satisfactory solution
for all parties affected by this closure. Okay, and now onto the main subject of the day, which is the so called biodegradable wet wipes that aren't quite the green wind some consumers might think they are. Wendy, You've done some really deep digging and got some stats on how many of them end up in our stormwater drainage systems, in our rivers, washed up on our beaches.
It's absolutely horrifying.
Yeah, So you've got two claims chat with these wet wipes for perab ones, which say they're bad or gradable, and the other that say they're flashable. Because wherever you're using them on your body, that's how I mean. It's mostly moist toilet issue, which a very yeah they're saying, you know, they marketed as saying get cleaner sort of thing and use the Yeah, and it's not a cheap process. So you'd imagine they used by high end consumers who
fall for the marketing. So they cause significant blockages and sewer systems globally, or wipes that are flushed, whatever their marketing claim is, particularly in large cities, which lead to costly repairs and obviously cause a lot of environmental damage.
So the City of Cape Ton's water and sanitation teams listen to these numbers, had to attend to one thousand and seventy two one thousand and seventy two sewer blockages in Camps Bay, Bucko and Clifton and Cpoint between July twenty twenty three and March of this year.
So over one thousand blockages in just those four suburbs. Yes, in a space of not quite two years.
Yeah, okay. And one of the.
Main cause are these blockages. There's the City of Cape Town or wear twaps being flushed down the toilet along with some other items which do not belong in the sewer system. The city doesn't care what that's what's said on the package. Don't not toilet paper, if it's thicker and whatever, then don't do it, is what they're saying. And I suppose a's the ones that need to deal with problem. They've got a right to say that, to say that.
So okay.
So six thousand kilograms of waste removed from their sewer pump station monthly, a lot of it wet wipes and wendy.
They've shared some photographs.
With us and we have shared those on our social media platforms to just demonstrate and illustrate this. If you do not believe us, or you are still operating under the misperception that these are products which just go away when you flush them away, I'll urge you to go to our social media pages and take a look at those photographs and see for yourself what is happening.
They're actually from the city's website and I was given a link to them, so they're actually out there. I'm sure a lot of people haven't seen them, but they really were. And you know, the wipes are very, very visible.
And very obvious and wendy. The problem is not just the wipes themselves, but it's the way they cling to other rubbish.
Yes, so they combine with greece and other debris to form fatburgs, which became famous, infamous rather in twenty thirteen when London removed a fifteen ton fat burg. Mostly it's made up of discarded wipes, and it took them weeks to dismantle that. Water UK reports that wipes cause ninety three percent ninety three percent of UK sewer blockages, with three hundred thousand incidents costing them one hundred million around
a year. So I mean, other countries are in many cases much better at keeping statistics of these sort of things. But I think we can we can draw our you know, draw from that the fact that this is a big problem in any countries or municipalities sewer system. So, as I said, a lot of these products are marketed across the world as flashable or biodegradable in the case of those that they're not telling you to flush. But these claims aren't many cases inaccurate, almost leading, and this is
what leads to significant sewer system issues. So it's said that in the case of the flashable wipes, that they do not disintegrate quickly enough to avoid clogging sewer systems, because, unlike toilet paper, which breaks down almost immediately in water wet, WAPs are designed to remain intact with wet when wet because they kept you know, and if what they're in is not going to break them down for even along there on the shelf before you use them, doesn't it
just make logical sense that they're not going to magically disappear and disintegrate and degrade or whatever you want to use as they go into the system. The problem is, yes, they they will break down, but in many cases they reach the sewage system and start causing the damage before
they've had a chance to do it. Yes, that's really it's the same story as so many of these so called compostible products would be that they're not going to be composted in ideal composting conditions which would allow them to break down. So you can claim that they are compostible or biodegradable, but that's not the same thing as saying that they are being composted or being biodegraded because
they're never given the chance to do so. And in the case of flashable that they're going to behave like ordinary toilet paper once you flush them, because they're simply they've been sitting in water and you still they're still.
Intact when you get them in your hand. I mean logic and a change when you go it on the loop. Yeah.
So here's another stat In a Toronto.
And had so many I just had to leave most of.
Them out for time purposes. But in Toronto Metropolitan University, their study had researchers testing twenty three wipes that were labeled as flashable and found that only two partially disintegrated. Sure Similarly, in the case of wipes labeled as a bad A gradible made with cellulose based fibers such as rayon or viscos, they do degrade, as we've said, but
in many cases not quickly enough. A twenty twenty three Science Direct study found that more than half of so called biodegradable wipes contained synthetic fibers or chemical additives that inhibited degrading, leading to persistent microfibers that polluted waterways. So heyes, an industry that is when association rather that is quoted when you ask the manufacturers of flashable wipes to justify their claims. It's a US based association called INDA, the
Association of the Non Woven Fabrics Industry. And INDA has developed voluntary guidelines because there's there are no government regulations around this, right, so they've developed voluntary guidelines for flash ability. But without going into too much detail, and there's a lot of detail. These have been criticized for not replacing or replicating rather real world sewer conditions. So they'll give them, say, three minutes for it to break down, but in three minutes the damage has been done.
It's already chunking up a pipe somewhere in the system.
So that sort of thing and their moves I know in the UK to have it put an end to safety flash or flashable wipes because it's of the same problem.
Well, Victor's mailing in to say, thanks to your previous program on the disposal of wet wipes, I now know only to put them in the dustbin and never to flush them down the loo. The problem is Wendy, so much of the packaging is still clearly saying flushable or even naming them brands like flush Ease, which imply that they can be flushed. And again I'm going to come back to that phrase. You just used real world sewer conditions.
It's one thing to say that in perfect laboratory conditions this product will bid degrade or will break down eventually. It doesn't get eventually when you put it down the toilet into the sewer system. It's a matter of minutes forwards into the main main flowing pipes and where it is going to coaguate with all the other things that shouldn't.
Be there exactly.
And the other problem is a user issue, and that is and one of the brands will get to in a moment they say, don't use more than two, but human nature is why I use two, and I can do a better job with four and so.
People and that's use a fistful and that all goes down at the same time.
That's guaranteed to cause a problem.
Well, a couple of interesting comments here. Herod's saying thank you for this program. I want to add that critical pumps, which are submerged pumps at super collector booster pumps burn out and fail because of things like this, plus rags including kitchen towels, those typical red or blue dailies. They get tracked trapped in the fans of the pumps, and that's when one of our council members, in fact, it's all of me he free. Thank you for adding to that.
Marica saying when I was in London, I read that the river bed of the Thames is lined with mounds and mounds of wet wipes. I will never buy one again. Sheila's it's time baby wipes and disposable nappies should be banned. And then a long input from Jamie. I'm just going to try and summarize here, Jamie saying nappies and sanitary hygiene products also need.
To be added to this list.
Many of them don't biodgrade even in landfalls. Reducing environmble impact and landfall waste starts at the production, design, and manufacturing of goods or of packaging. In the case of food, food and beverages, it's ludicrous that consumers are forced to accept unsustainable products which pollute the environment and create landfull waste. Products need to be designed so that they last longer,
are suitable for repair and servicing. Food and beverage packaging needs to be economized and designed so that it is biodegradable or composted. And I get to say again, biodegradable and actually going to biod grade, compostible and likely to be composted two very different things that need to be understood. Saying that it can happen in perfect lab conditions is not the same as it will happen when you throw it away.
It's the same with the term recyclable.
YEP, and recyclable versus.
Which part of the country, by which plant and it's technically possible, but it's not happening in any case.
We've got loads of what voice notes coming in and we're going to place some of those.
WhatsApp seven to five six seven one five six Sevendy.
I'm in the plastics industry and we struggle with the same thing with plastic and a lot of the time, but industrial composting as opposed to be compostible.
So yeah, hi Papa, you haven't yet had the conversation about biodegradability and home compostibility yet with Wendy, but I just thought i'd.
Shoot this message through.
It is a huge buck bear, I think you know that. And it applies equally to claims around dog pooh bags, and so many of them are completely spurious, and yet
those that are genuine. It makes no sense. I mean, why would you have a compostable dog pooh bag when the person who is using it is not going to make any effort to home compost it, and and similarly, it is not going to make any effort to watch it bio degrade because ultimately it ends up in the municipal waste stream where it goes to anaerobic landfall, where it's just going to sit as it would if it was plastic. So yeah, it's it's a big issue, and
it's just greenwashing, pure and simple. Caroline from the M three actually.
Bye, Papa, I've been I've seen advertising and been seeing a bamboo product that is a w as well as bamboo disposed on their piece. They claim to be biodegradable. Would that be?
So I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head, Wendy, do you.
There was a product in Pick and Pay that I saw when I was doing my re search that it was sort of being marketed as a baby wipe, but it said organic biodegradable. That was their whole Its plastered all over the pack. And when I looked for a company name and address contact details, there was nothing. So I went to Pick and Pay and I said, this is last week, and I said, please, gud you ask your buyers to give me a name and whatever. And
it hasn't happened yet, unfortunately. But that was something I also wanted to interrogate because it was a very very bold claim in the context of that market.
I'm going to send the same generic response that it depends on if they are being disposed of in the correct way. Any product is only going to buy a Y grade if it is put in the correct conditions for that process to start. And Caroline, thank you. You probably recognized the voice of Caroline from Project Nouah Tugt, who is passionate about these things. She's told us over and
over again. The conditions for composting in your home compost put are not the same as an industrial grade composting system, and the kind of chemical reactions, the temperatures that get reached to trigger those reactions, et cetera, cannot happen in your average home setting.
So this product is I took a picture in the store Bamboo Wipe sixties made by Bamboo Earth, but there was there were no contact details. As I said, the claim in large letters on the front is one hundred percent organic, compostible, biodegradable. And that's why I wanted to speak to the company compassible in what circumstances they were into the asterisks there to explain. But yeah, I really do and we can come back next week. Perhaps I really do want to engage with that company to find.
Out under what conditions.
Then I don't know if they're man should overseas, but there should be an address, yeah, at the very least of a local company that imports them or whatever, And there absolutely is nothing. So that's a problem in terms of our labeling laws for one thing, Ambers saying I've bought biodegradable pante liders.
Pands had tampons.
Before, but have always wondered how degradable or landfall friendly they actually are.
I think the answer is the same.
It depends on where they go and what conditions they are put into whether they can actually begin the process
of degrading properly. Now, let's just Caroline use the word green washing, and it's the word I used in our engagement, in our prep for the segment, Wendy, because my question to you is why are brands allowed to get away with this kind of green washing, of marketing a product as flushable, making the consumer believe that it is going to disappear in a responsible way when they know full well they have to know full well that it's not going to do so you mentioned earlier, there are no
sort of legally binding standards for for that claim of flushing.
No, and there have been several law for law suits though that have challenged the manufacturer's claims. Procter and Gamble settled the federal class action lawsuit in New York five years ago, agreeing to remove the claim that their charm and fresh mates are quote safe for sewer and septic systems. The plaintiffs that argue that the wips don't disintegrate upon flushing or break down sufficiently to pass through paps and could thus cause serious problems for plumbing, sewer and scepting
septic systems. This is also, I mean, before you get to the global that the bigger issue of our municipal systems is your own plumbing system. I would imagine that there were some plumbing bills related to things that were said to be flashabile and actually ended up clogging, but
we do have. There was the Green Drop reports findings on failing wastewater infrastructure in this country, suggesting that WAPs contribute to the problem as they do globally, and the City of Cape Toan most definitely considers them a no. No.
Mayor or Committee member for Water and Sanitation Counselor Sahi Budridin told us that improper disposal of wet wips is a massive issue in Cape Town, affecting the operations at pump stations, causing sewer blockages that lead to sewer overflows, and even causing damage to the city's water and sanitation infrastructure. He said, it's important to remember that only the three pas can be flushed pee poop, and paper and brackets toilet paper, not the moist stuff.
That's a good and easy way to remember it that nothing else should be going.
Anything else that makes its way into the drainage system will eventually cause a blockage or damage the system. While it may not seem that one flushed wet wip here and there is enough to cause these problems, it's the accumulation of wet wips, cooking, fat, nappies and other items disposed incorrectly by many people that can quickly cause a large solid war that fat burg that stops the flow
of sewage. That's what can I just say if you ever need convincing as to why you don't want to be in a situation where your sewer system is unable to hope with the flow of sewage to yourself of airma and watch the Netflix documentary on the Poop.
Cruise and see what they went through when that happened in a contained environment of a ship, and you will certainly rethink everything that you put down a toilet is all I will say, Wendy, I mean you shed that staggering figure of the one thousand blockages in those four Atlantic Seaboard suburbs in the space of two years, but the figure for the city overall between December twenty twenty three and January twenty twenty four, so a year basically.
A year and one month.
No, no, not even.
That's that's peak season. That's that's Christmas fifteenth of December twenty twenty three to fifteen January twenty four, so it's just a week. It's a month essentially, but it's the peak month. Cape to On recorded more than eighty four hundred sewer blockages. So you must have mentioned they are maintenance teams where everyone else is holiday is now on full active duty. The biggest culprits condoms, airbirds, wet wipes, rags, plastics, snappies and cotton swabs.
And I'm going to add to that anybody, and Jamie has mentioned this in his message. Anybody who has ever taken part in a beach cleanup will know lollipop sticks
are part of that problem. And Jamie actually wrote to me to say he spoke to Mayor Jordan hill Lewis about this in twenty twenty two and he told me he had expressed his request to lollipop manufacturers to please change the sucker sticks to paper, and that it had been ignored, and that these remain frequent offenders in clogging drains and washing up on the.
Beaches because they get tangled and all sorts of other things they have done ubiquitous and they are terryware tear absolutely everywhere. Cigarette bats another problem sanitary products, especially nappis, et cetera. So eight eighty four hundred blockages in a single month over peak season, I mean, that is absolutely horrifying. So remember those three p's. That's a very simple way of holding on to.
It as to what could can be managed by the system. Wendy you okay, Now let's drill down to what the manufacturers actually said, because you did challenge several of them in preparation for today's segments.
Tell us about those in games. Okay.
So, Baby soft moist toilet tissue claims to be one hundred percent safety flush as well as biodegradable. They are recommended to be used together with dry toilet to shoe for superior cleaning. So you're gonna put your your paper down and this wet wap, So I asked Kimberley Clark for evidence of their safety flush and biodegradable claims. The answer came, they made from one hundred percent cellulose fibers and don't contain plastic. They are safety flush when disposed
of correctly. That's an important provisor there, because a lot of people what does that mean? They were saying, we'll get I think they're the ones. Yes, no more than two sheets at a time, two.
Sheets join up with somebody else's, two sheets join up with the neighbors.
Become a lot of people.
Now you saying, you know you must be you must have this product to be have a superior clean rear end.
So now you're going to.
Use toilet Baby plus three or four sheets Our baby soft moist toilet isshoes meat all industry standards and are designed to break down in the sewer system and not cause blockages. Kimberley Clark is a proud member of INDA. Remember I spoke about INDA and something else called r ed A and A associations of non worven manufacturers and suppliers. All its tests must be conducted and passed to demonstrate conformance and to claim flushable. So these are industry standards and tests.
Remember they're not the industry needs to be having a conversation with about the sewer system.
Yeah.
I also spoke to GQ tissue. That company has the brand SAT and Touch and they put out flushies.
The name says it all at all, Yeah.
And it's very big on it's got a picture of a toilet on the front and lots of flushing action.
Yeah.
So it's it's very obviously intended to be flushed through and the recommended use three to four sheets per flow.
Okay, thanks for picking that up. Three to four Okay. So apparently the product is called that they're made from. It's called bioflush, which I mean, it doesn't say much, but it can decompose one hundred percent in the nature and disperse in the water. It's produced using one hundred percent natural sources kind to the skin. Bioflush helps to make life easier for everybody by not clogging the toilets
and city sewages. The flush ability of bioflush has been approved by seven tests which were performed by CTP laboratories in France, according to the regulations EDANA and INDA. So those are the two guidelines regulations that are industry manufactured.
Okay, so they're all falling back on the same response that lab testing has confirmed that they break down. But clearly what the lab testing conditions are demonstrating is not correlating with what is happening in our through system in exactly so in it.
Devinish owns Sandy Touch. They make a very huge players in the white market. They make a very wide range from medical grade using hospitals to lapize use at the bry. They don't make any flashable wires, but they do claim biodegradeability and recyclability.
She says.
The problem is that wet warps are and that's what I said at the beginning, are by.
Nature supplied wet.
They need wet strength, So by nature a wet wap needs to be strong enough to not tear while wiping or cleaning. I mean, it's really not what you want, especially being used in the toilet situation. They also need shelf life, so they need to stay wet in a solution on a shelf or in stores without starting to buio degrade and break and then or break down prior
to use. The wet strength comes from it either bounderies or from fibers which are entangled to be strong, whether they're natural or not, they are entangled to be strong and not breakdown in a water solution, because that's how the've got to sit on the shelf, and that's how they've got to be fully formed in your integrity.
Well used people can just.
Get this in their minds, maybe like at home, so she says, and coupled with human nature, which says, never take one wipe at a time, but take more. The mass is often more of a problem than the actual wipe itself. If one small wipe was used and flushed at a time, the chance of sewage lines blocking would
be minimized. Another big problem in South Africas, isn't it, is that we have search systems that are not being upgraded, with many many municipal systems having to try to cope with way more waste than they were originally designed to do with the influx of city of people rather into the cities. So she says, they have wips not designed to go in the toilet, but on the toilet seat. Eco wipes to clean toilet seats are made from wet strength paper. They contain a minimal amount of binder, which
is what makes them strong. Enough to hold the liquid that's needed to presaturate the wipes.
They very thin.
The base is similar instructions to tea bag paper and they will bio degrade over time in the right conditions in an act of compost heap, she says. But they don't call them flashable because I can't want those.
Those should by rights work in a properly working compost heap.
Heap implies a home set. It's not an industrial compost.
We have a n c's which are some kind of a I forget the full name, which at night will you deal with from.
Effectively lunch on them?
And clearly, interestingly, since we're talking wipe, Sunny Touch does a green sandy wipe in collaboration with Checkers. You'll see them at the front of the stores, and those wipes because they invite you to put them at the bottom, and I dispose of them there as well as the containers.
I think it's polyproperly and that they come in are fully recyclable, and they're in this joint venture with Checkers, with Checkers and shop right where they remove those used wipes and those those tubs that they come in and they make palettes plastic timber which is used to make outdoor furniture, jungle gyms and other amazing party They can't say the green Sanny Touch wipes that are at the entrance to the COVID days to wipe your hands, to wipe the trolleys.
Okay, that they're supply free.
And they are very much involved in getting that whole lot recycle.
So as you said, it's recyclable and also actively being resigned.
Have to have a project to enable that claim if you've got because that's why I said, tell me about your recyclable claim, and she did in great detail, which I have summarized down to very little.
Yeah, somebody making an interesting point. I find that taking one wipe is almost impossible. So with my daughter it takes a few at a time. So even if you intended to only use one, I hear, remember that the way that they come out of it's the same with tissues, especially at the start of a box. Yes, you're trying to take one, you get a fist fall in one.
Toilet paper at the beginning of the role of we're talking about that the way some of them are glued. I mean you to take this huge.
One just to wheel away the lot broken heads.
So finally I just want to mention Clicks because they are the brand owner and retailer of I Earth eco friendly flashable baby wips. So they're saying to the moms, use this on your babies and then flush. Yeah, right, And they make the claim one hundred percent flashable and biodegradable, designed to disintegrate during municipal treatment, reducing land full waste.
And so I asked them to substantiate and the answer was that their wips are made from viscos cellulos and wood pulp, making them plastic free, one hundred percent flashable and biodegradable. The wipe itself is one hundred percent paper and bracket cellulos and not made of any synthetic material. The wipe is then considered wet toilet paper when used. They say the independent tests have been conducted by the same lab in front same French yapp using the guidelines
for assessing the flush ability of disposable nonwoven products. So they're all citing the same guidelines, which experts this sort of thing are saying they too lenient in real life, I mean, before they've gone I think the one stat or Garlan I read was they must disintegrate within three minutes.
And as I said, that's someone's just not happening. So yeah, I think we go.
Back to councilors. I he'd Badriddine's advice. Only the three peas, please pee, poop and toilet paper, the old fashioned paper toilet paper, not the moist stuff.
That's what.
Don't shoot the messengerman effacturers.
That is what the city is saying.
And I would imagine that any other municipality in this country would be echoing that.
Okay, so please take it with a pinch of salt. What the packaging says and what happens in real life active environment, in a real life suicetting, they're not the same thing. And you're hearing that loud and clear. And if you have any doubt about whether the city is exaggerating the nature of this project, of this problem, please go and take a look on our social media pages.
We have shared and accredited to.
Them the photograph shared by City of Cape Town, which demonstrates the way that these wipes clog up the pumps, the catchment systems, et cetera. It is a very accurate visual representation of the nature of the problem. And clearly the wipes that reached those grids did not biod grade and disintegrate as they were intended to do in the system. So please go and take a look if you have
any remaining dots and it's not just caped on. If you need any further comment, Belinda's saying wet wipes on the Fish River Canyon hike a terrible thing to behold.
I think we should also just say, in connection with those photos, a lot of those wipes will be ones which the manufacturers didn't specifically say you can flush these right, but the user issue they chose to. So it's just to say, don't assume. And I think the complication comes in where some are marketed as flashable and some aren't, and consumers might get the idea that just looks a thin little thing, I'm just going to pop it down.
And if you've had babies, like both of us have, I mean, one wipe is never enough, not the job in many circumstances, so it's going to be many and I think to large extents it's those ones. Extent those ones that are doing a lot of the damage. We can't blame it all on the ones that are marketed as flashable, but I think you know we've heard the evidence about are they really by degrading in time And.
The answer is emphatically no. So please keep that in mind, particularly next time you want to flush anything down your system in Cape Town. Right, we're going to have to wrap up there, so thank you so much to those who have contributed this afternoon, and please just bear in mind what you've heard that even if it says on the label that let's flush a bull, that does not mean it should be flushed in the city of Cape Town directly asking residents not to flush anything of the
nature of a wet wipe. Nothing but the three piece should be flushed down our loose system. If you learned nothing else today, please take that away with you.
And flush it.
Don't flush it, store it in your brain. Wendy thanks us all is for your help and we'll chat again next week Wednesday.
Well do