Coffee Grounds: The Silent Pipe Destroyer
You might think those tiny coffee grounds can’t possibly cause any real damage, but coffee grounds and grease are among the leading causes of blockages and clogged drains. When you casually rinse your French press or coffee maker in the sink, those grounds don’t just disappear into the great unknown.
Coffee grounds can combine with grease to form a thick, impenetrable residue that clogs pipes and causes backups, overflows, and pipe corrosion. The problem gets worse over time because coffee grounds do not dissolve in water, and when they enter the water system, they can accumulate.
Cooking Grease and Oil: The Sticky Nightmare
Everyone’s guilty of this one at some point. You finish cooking bacon or frying something delicious, and it seems so easy to just pour that leftover grease right down the drain. But as grease cools, it solidifies, which can cause big problems for your household pipes.
Pouring fat, oil, or grease down your kitchen sink can clog household pipes or sewers completely, and when wastewater can’t move freely through the sewer system due to a blockage, it can cause flooding and even sewage to backup into your home. The easiest option is to pour the grease and oils into sealable containers such as old coffee containers or milk jugs and throw them out with your regular garbage.
Flour and Starchy Foods: The Hidden Glue Makers
It might seem harmless to rinse a little flour off your hands or measuring cups, but here’s something that’ll shock you: flour and water equals glue, so it makes sense that rinsing flour down your sink can cause a blockage. The same principle applies to other starchy foods that seem innocent enough.
Grain products continue to absorb liquids even after they’re cooked, and while small grains might easily wash down the sink to begin with, they can get stuck and cause a bigger blockage as they continue to expand. Expanding foods like rice, pasta, and oatmeal – most starchy or grainy solids that puff up will cause blockages if they are poured down your drain.
Prescription Medications: The Water Supply Contaminator
This one’s particularly troubling because many people think flushing old medications is actually the responsible thing to do. The reality is far more concerning. Generally, unwanted medications should never be flushed down the toilet, and the environmental consequences are serious.
Flushing medications can introduce pharmaceutical compounds into the water supply, which can be harmful to both humans and wildlife, and wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to remove all pharmaceutical compounds from the water. In homes that use septic tanks, drugs flushed down the toilet can leach into the ground and seep into groundwater, and when residences are connected to wastewater treatment plants, drugs poured down the sink or flushed down the toilet can pass through the treatment system and enter rivers and lakes.
Household Paint: The Toxic Pipeline Threat
Whether you’re cleaning brushes after a weekend painting project or disposing of leftover paint, the sink might seem like the obvious solution. But paint – especially oil-based – can stick to your pipes and send toxic chemicals straight into the water system.
Household paints contain a ton of chemicals that can corrode pipes and be poisonous to aquatic species, as well as releasing harmful fumes, so rather than rinsing paint brushes in the laundry sink, it’s recommended to wash them in buckets of water and empty into the garden. Paint can immediately cause serious drainage issues – and subsequent health risks, and there are reasons why there are hazardous waste labels on most paints.
Dairy Products: The Oxygen-Stealing Surprise
Here’s one that genuinely surprises most people. Milk and other dairy has a high oxygen demand, which means the bacteria that feed on it use a lot of oxygen, and as treated wastewater is returned to creeks, rivers and oceans, this reduces the amount of oxygen in the water and can be detrimental to aquatic life.
So that splash of milk you pour down the drain or the yogurt container you rinse out isn’t as harmless as it seems. A great way to dispose of dairy products is actually by placing them in your organic or food waste composting bin, which is a much better option than adding any milk product to your general waste bin and sending it to landfill.
Personal Care Products: The Chemical Cocktail
We’ve all done it – dumped old shampoo, conditioner, or that weird face mask you tried once down the drain. Just because you can turn on the faucet and wash all remnants of said unwanted substance down the drain, doesn’t mean that it goes away – it really just goes somewhere else, and it’s likely that it will end up in streams, rivers, groundwater, and eventually, the ocean.
While your half of a bottle of old anti-frizz hairspray might not be the cause of major concern, when you consider the fact that millions of people are also pouring their respective leftover liquids down the drain, then we start to see a problem. Remember, we’re all connected somehow and every nasty chemical we put out into the environment will come right back to us in some way, shape, or form – it’s time we started putting out good stuff instead.
Cleaning Products with Harsh Chemicals
Harsh cleaning products might not necessarily clog your sinks and drains, but they can be hazardous to your health and eat away at your pipes. The issue becomes even more complex when you consider how these chemicals interact with each other in the water system.
Many cleaning products contain bleach and ammonia, which can corrode pipes and harm the environment, and mixing cleaning products can cause dangerous chemical reactions, releasing toxic gases and damaging your plumbing system. Cleaning products labeled with “DANGER – CORROSIVE” should never be disposed at the curb, into a storm sewer or catch basin, or down any drain, including highly corrosive liquids such as hydrofluoric, sulfiric or muriatic acids.
Eggshells and Fibrous Food Waste
Many people assume that if their garbage disposal can handle it, it must be safe for the pipes. That’s not necessarily true. Eggshells are another seemingly harmless bi-product like coffee grounds, but these are not easily disposed of and can get stuck in viscous pockets of other difficult-to-drain substances.
Fibrous fruits and veggies like pumpkin, corn husks, and other tough-shelled fruits and veggies can easily clog your kitchen sink. These materials don’t break down easily and can create serious blockages when combined with other waste materials in your pipes.
Garden Chemicals and Pesticides
After working in the garden, it’s tempting to rinse off tools and containers in the nearest sink. But pesticides and herbicides are designed to kill pests, but they can also harm beneficial organisms and contaminate water supplies, and these chemicals can pose serious health risks to humans and animals if they enter drinking water sources.
Unwanted fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides should never be poured down a household drain, storm sewer or catch basin, and you can help by using non-toxic lawn and garden care products and purchasing only what you need so that you can use up the product completely. Chemicals and unwanted medicines can contaminate lakes and rivers, or public drinking water supplies if simply flushed down the toilet or poured down the drain.