Cooking Grease and Fats
The absolute worst thing you can pour down your drain is cooking grease, bacon fat, or any form of animal fat. Bacon fat, cooking grease, butter, margarine, and anything with fat or oil do terrible things to pipes. After the initial use, fat congeals, hardening inside the plumbing. This creates rock-solid blockages that can cost thousands to remove.
Pouring fats, oils, and grease down your sink or toilet can cause serious plumbing issues, such as clogs and blockages. As these substances cool, they solidify and build up inside your pipes, leading to stubborn clogs. What starts as liquid quickly turns into something resembling concrete inside your pipes.
Coffee Grounds
As fine as they are, coffee grounds can cause plumbing problems if they end up down the sink. Before you rinse out your coffee cup, dispose of the grounds in the trash. Many people assume these tiny particles will just wash away, but they accumulate over time like sediment in a riverbed.
Coffee grounds are best sent to the compost bin. However, even those with a garbage disposal should avoid putting coffee grounds down the sink because they can damage the septic system or overall piping. The grounds clump together with other debris, creating stubborn blockages that require professional intervention.
Flour and Starchy Foods
As with a sourdough starter, flour and water mixed together is a recipe for a plumbing disaster. When rinsed down the drain, the fine flour particles form a gummy paste that hardens inside pipes, often cementing themselves around other bits of food waste and eventually causing a costly clog.
Starchy food items swell as they go down the sink. Pasta and rice can also get tangled under the garbage disposal, causing the sink to back up. These foods continue expanding even after they’ve left your kitchen, creating massive blockages in municipal sewer systems.
Wet Wipes and Flushable Products
Like flushable cat litter, flushable wipes are misleading. When wipes end up in drains, they can combine with other materials to create a mass that results in plumbing problems. The term “flushable” has become one of the biggest lies in modern marketing.
Despite being labeled as “flushable,” wet wipes and so-called flushable wipes are among the main contributors to the burgeoning fatberg crisis. Their sturdy construction, built to absorb and clean up spills effectively, turns disadvantageous when disposed of via the toilet. These wipes don’t break down like toilet paper and create massive problems in sewer systems worldwide.
Paint and Chemical Solvents
Paint contains harmful chemicals that can cause problems for the environment and the local water supply. If you have small amounts of leftover paint, let them dry and harden before disposing of them. Even tiny amounts of paint can contaminate water treatment facilities.
Solvents and harsh cleaners may seem like liquids that will just wash away, but they can actually eat through pipes and cause damage over time. And paint – even paint water with just a bit of the material in it – can clog your pipes. These chemicals don’t just disappear when they go down the drain.
Medications and Pills
Flushing unused pills might seem harmless, but wastewater treatment plants aren’t designed to filter pharmaceuticals. In fact, studies have shown traces of medications in rivers and lakes, where they can affect wildlife.
Due to adverse environmental impacts, avoid throwing household cleaners, motor oil, and medications down your pipes. These items have historically harmed the environment, and some things like motor oil are illegal to send down drains. Your expired antibiotics could end up creating antibiotic-resistant bacteria in water systems.
Eggshells and Food Scraps
Most sink drains aren’t large enough to admit eggshells, and you shouldn’t try to force them down either. If you do get eggshells into your drain somehow, they can cause clogs. The hard, pointed edges of the shell can also catch other objects and result in a blockage.
Even with a garbage disposal, eggshells create a chalky residue that builds up over time. The membrane inside the shells can wrap around disposal blades, while the shells themselves never fully break down. What seems like harmless food waste becomes a maintenance nightmare.
Paper Towels and Cotton Products
Paper towels are not designed to disintegrate in water like toilet paper. Instead, they maintain their form, becoming a stubborn blockage in wastewater pipes. Unlike toilet paper, which dissolves quickly, paper towels are engineered to stay strong when wet.
Paper towels and cotton balls or swabs do not dissolve instantly, unlike human waste. The best place to dispose of these items is in the trash. Cotton swabs and dental floss create web-like tangles that trap other debris, making blockages worse than you’d imagine.
Feminine Hygiene Products
Feminine products don’t dissolve in water, so if they end up in pipes, they can cause clogs. Even if they do make it through your pipes, they can go on to cause problems for septic systems and wastewater treatment centers.
Tampons and pads do not dissolve when flushed. Therefore, they should be thrown away in the garbage. Otherwise, you may experience septic or sewer line clogs. These products expand when they absorb water, making them perfect clog-creators in narrow pipes.
Bleach and Chemical Cleaners
Bleach doesn’t damage pipes, but it can lead to other issues. Ammonia is one solution to help clean drains. When bleach mixes with ammonia, it can result in chloramine gas. This dangerous combination can create toxic fumes in your home.
Chemical cleaners used to dissolve toilet and sink clogs are incredibly corrosive, as they are designed to break through blockages and clear out the pipes. Unfortunately, such cleaners can also melt PVC plumbing, break toilets, and get stuck in a pipe groove leading to cracks. The cure often becomes worse than the disease when it comes to chemical drain cleaners.
The Hidden Costs of Fatbergs
According to some estimates, London spends significant amounts annually removing fatbergs from city sewers. New York City has spent millions fighting fatbergs in recent years. These astronomical costs get passed down to taxpayers through higher utility bills and municipal taxes.
Fat, oil and grease (known as FOG) — infamous for solidifying inside pipes and concrete sewers — causes a significant portion of sewer blockages in the United States and Australia. The cost of these blockages in terms of maintenance and rehabilitation represents billions of dollars in infrastructure costs annually. These numbers represent a staggering drain on public resources that could be prevented with better disposal habits.