To Flush or Not to Flush?

Yuck…! Most people don’t want to know what happens to stuff you flush down the toilet. But knowing what to flush and what NOT to flush is important so that we can keep our water clean and stop our sewage plants from being jammed with trash. Especially as the climate gets hotter and hotter, water is a major issue!

In Chicago, you can only flush the three P’s: pee, poop, and toilet paper. Everything else is a no. You can’t flush “flushable wipes” or “biodegradable wipes” because they clog the filters at the water treatment plants, you can’t flush paper towels, diapers, tampons, condoms, food, household chemicals, cat litter, dead pets (including fish), hair, dentures, floss, and anything plastic.

It’s especially important not to flush pills and other medications down your toilet! The sewage plant doesn’t treat water to remove pharmaceutical chemicals, meaning that anytime someone flushes pills, the chemicals in the pills stay in the water and are released into Lake Michigan where they harm flora and fauna. Dispose of unneeded pills at pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS, where select locations have collection boxes, or at Chicago Police Stations and Chicago Water Reclamation Plants.

Contact lenses, too, are a big problem for cleaning our water. Contact lenses can get through the treatment plants’ filters and into Lake Michigan, where they break down into microplastics over time. Contact lenses, like other plastics, are also very prone to absorbing harmful chemicals, which get absorbed by humans and wildlife if the microplastic gets into their bodies. If absorbed, microplastics can cause hormone dysregulation and cancer. The New York Times reports scientists estimate that around 20% of people who wear contact lenses flush them down the toilet or sink, which means that billions of contact lenses, weighing a total of about 22 metric tons, are released into our water system every year.

In addition to microplastics, forever chemicals known as PFAS have been found in Illinois’s drinking water. PFAS are man-made chemicals found in materials like nonstick pans, flame retardants, and fast food packaging, and because PFAS are man-made, nature hasn’t found a way to break them down yet. PFAS seem to harm human immune systems and livers. You can express your concern over this to your alderman, Chief Sustainability Officer Angela Tovar, Mayor Lightfoot, your state legislator, and Governor Pritzker.

As the world gets hotter, water conservation is going to be increasingly important, including the fact we have to keep the water we do have clean. One last thing you can do to help is to avoid showering during rainstorms. Storms dump tons of water into our sewage system, putting pressure on it, so by avoiding showering until the water has drained away, you can help the system operate efficiently.

Want to learn more? Attend an Environmental Action Committee meeting on August 15 at 4 pm. Email environment@lwvchicago.org for the Zoom link!