Engineer in Kitchener, Ontario, hopes to unclog toilets by changing Canada’s plumbing code

When you press the button or press the handle to flush a toilet, you probably don’t give much thought to what’s going down — but one engineer from Kitchener, Ont., thinks you might must do.

Barbara Robinson says she wants to change the national plumbing code so that all restrooms have a trash can in every cubicle. This would encourage people to throw away sanitary products and wipes instead of flushing them, which in turn can lead to sewer blockages.

“It’s a huge problem,” Robinson, founder of Norton Engineering, said in an interview on CBC Kitchener-Waterloo’s The morning edition. “We get blockages in sewers, we get fatbergs, pumping stations close and all that material ends up at the sewage treatment plant.”

They flush these products because they have no choice– Barbara Robinson, engineer

Robinson, who used to work for the City of Kitchener, said people are known to flush things down the toilet because they don’t have direct access to a trash can.

“There’s a bin outside by the sinks, but there’s not a bin in every stall. So women who are out in the office or at the gym in public and menstruating need to somehow get that product from the stall to the public trash can in the main part of the washroom. We get little bags to do this with. However, in my research, I found that we know that women never leave the stall with that little bag,” Robinson said.

“They flush these products because they have no choice.”

The solution? Robinson says it needs to change Canada’s National Plumbing Code — it doesn’t currently require all toilets to have a trash can in every toilet.

Blocked pipes ‘ongoing problem’ in Waterloo region

Dan Meagher, the Waterloo region’s acting manager of hydrogeology and water programs, said non-flushable items going down toilets is an issue affecting wastewater operations in nearly all jurisdictions.

“At our sewage pumping stations and wastewater treatment plants, we are seeing clogging of the pumps and the need for emergency shutdowns and maintenance to get the pumps back up and running,” he said in an email to CBC News. “This also allows the replacement of pumps, screens and other equipment.”

He didn’t have an exact cost estimate of how much the region spends on this type of work, but said maintenance, such as an annual inspection and a flushing program to keep the pipes clean, costs all taxpayers.

In 2016, Woolwich Township reminded residents to throw their makeup wipes and baby wipes in the trash as the township’s staff deal with the accumulation of items on a daily basis.

At the time, the council’s superintendent of public works, Barry Baldasaro, said the wipes do the most damage when they stick to the rotating blades in the sewage pumps. If the pumps jam or become clogged, the pumping station switches off automatically and must be flushed.

It has also been a problem in cities across the country, including:

Marissa Mitton, chief of Calgary’s wastewater management and maintenance division, told CBC Calgary that “more often than not we find a buildup of non-flushable items, including flushable wipes,” when crews respond to those calls.

Meagher said it’s important to remind residents never to flush wipes labeled “flushable,” greases, greases, and other items not intended to go down the toilet.

“It can also be very costly on an individual basis if wipes flushed in their own home cause blockages in the pipes leading from their home to the larger pipes in the distribution system,” he said. “Any repair of these blockages is at your own expense.”