WATER company Severn Trent is urging people not to flush potential toilet paper substitutes like kitchen towel or wet wipes down the toilet.
The plea comes as supermarkets once again start rationing toilet paper amid reports of panic buying as the lockdown begins.
Severn Trent’s sewer blockages lead, Grant Mitchell, said: “During the first national lockdown we noticed a lot of blockages caused by substitute items, and while we understand that the fear of flushing the wrong thing down the toilet is likely to be quite low on everyone’s list of priorities at the moment.
“Sewer blockages across the region are still around 40,000 per year, three quarters of which are caused by people putting the wrong things down their toilets and sinks.
“Sewers are only designed to cope with toilet paper and human waste.
“Other things like wet wipes and kitchen roll do not break down in pipes and can easily cause a blockage.
“When a sewer is blocked the waste must go somewhere and that is usually back out of the drain and into the roads or even your home, which is the last thing that anyone wants.
“The good news is that this can be easily avoided by disposing of any substitute items in the bin, instead of the toilet.”
