Toilet paper may be hard to spot on store shelves, but buyers must beware when looking for alternatives to toilet paper. While flushable wipes can be tempting as an alternative, these wipes are not able to break down like toilet paper can. Riverside Wastewater Official Bill Stuckey tells KCII News how common toilet paper alternatives like baby wipes can cause major damage, “Toilet paper is designed to break down after a certain time frame after being flushed which is usually why you don’t see that causing an issue with backups and getting snagged on pipes. Usually when I go into homes and find someone has a backed up sewer into the basement after we have gotten the sewer cleaned out, we usually find a few tree roots or a small misalignment in the pipes and toilet paper and other things usually don’t have much issue passing through there. Baby wipes are one of the number one things you find that start hanging up on there and that starts collecting other things and it’s making that pipe smaller and smaller over time.” 

Stuckey recommends individuals throw away used baby wipes in the trash instead of flushing them down the toilet. He also doesn’t recommend paper towels be flushed either, “While paper towels are probably a safer alternative than baby wipes or flushable wipes, those still have a tendency to not break down as quickly as toilet paper does. And you’ll still potentially run into some of those same issues.” Ultimately toilet paper is the best product to use.