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Yet a clever bloke invents this.
http://metro.co.uk/2018/05/08/man-invents-home-incinerator-turn-nappies-fuel-7530763/
Will probably never be heard of again, I mean after wiping little cherubs arse and not having the sense to put the waste in the actual bin instead of the toilet what hope is there they could understand burning i
*stealth post to check the drop down box is still there so I'm not posting in the bike forum
Ah I see your game.
After a full cycle, the waste is almost completely gone and users simply flush the remaining ash down the drain.
Nik said: ‘The ash which is left at the end of the cycle can be safely washed into the sewers.’
I wonder if the sewage people agree.
That looks like a giant version of Mr Fusion from Back to the Future.
The previous owner of this house flushed all of her used wet wipes down the toilet, meaning that the drains backed up shortly after we moved in. A nice sewage overflow!
She was so stupid that she didn’t seem to realise that she could get a free parking permit online to park in the street. She didn’t so we occasionally have bailiffs turning up about parking fines.
I’m not sure how you help people like her.
In the last month I've unblocked 3 drains , all had wet wipes and one a tampon applicator jammed in the pipe with wet wipes and tampons - which was nice . :-/
The female of the species doesn't seem to read the instructions on thier toiletries .
How hard can it be to invent plastic free wet wipes?
How hard can it be to invent plastic free wet wipes?
I agree, but we live in a society that thinks it acceptable to bag tomatoes in two different plastic containers, that cucumbers and bananas need packaging, where every light in a town centre (and out of town shops sometimes) is left on through the night, and people can’t cope with walking 200m to the corner shop so need to drive. In other words, who cares! (I do, btw. 🙁 )
Got to wonder what temperature that thing burns at, and how many dioxins it produces. Also flusing the ash down the sewer - that's not nice.
In the last month I’ve unblocked 3 drains , all had wet wipes and one a tampon applicator jammed in the pipe with wet wipes and tampons – which was nice . :-/
The female of the species doesn’t seem to read the instructions on thier toiletries .
A couple of points on this. Firstly, why assume that all wet wipes are used by women? Men change nappies too. Secondly, men don't have to contend with used sanitary products and so it's fairly obvious that they're not going to provide much evidence of their bad habits in this area....
On another note. The whole disposable nappy versus reusable is actually pretty even.
Which leaves us with the issue that we generally have to keep babies poo out of the carpet but without an obvious solution. I think the main thing is making disposable nappies out of better materials (ie easily degrades) and disposing of them correctly (ie not burning or flushing). Same argument goes for wet wipes.
I agree, but we live in a society that thinks it acceptable to bag tomatoes in two different plastic containers, that cucumbers and bananas need packaging, where every light in a town centre (and out of town shops sometimes) is left on through the night
Absolutely agree. Rules regarding food packaging are long overdue but the government is scared of Big Food. Remember the pre-election promises about reducing child obesity by controlling advertising, amongst other things, that went away because those in charge were given the fear of God about a minute % of reduced spending on food when it would have been recouped many times over by having less fat people?!
Double packing is horrible. Economy pizzas are sold perfectly well in the plastic wrap alone because it's done on price. The reason that branded pizzas come in boxes it to add value to the product and make it seem more premium. Just ban the boxes (and packaging on fruit/veg, cardboard around yoghurts and ready meals, cereal in bags in boxes, etc etc) and let them having branding on the freezer shelf.
Far more low hanging fruit than unavoidable nappies...
Did you read all the nappy article / report? Our washables were never tumble dried, not always washed at 60C, used for 2 successive kids and then some passed on for use elsewhere. That swung it to a far from even washable vs disposable argument.
How hard can it be to invent plastic free wet wipes?
Whatever you replaced the plastic with would have to behave like plastic- not dissolve when wet- so they’d block drains in exactly the same way whatever they were made of.
How hard can it be to invent plastic free wet wipes?
What you want is a material that quickly decomposes in the presence of water so if flushed they disintegrate? Can you see any issues with making WET wipes from such a material?
Which leaves us with the issue that we generally have to keep babies poo out of the carpet but without an obvious solution.
Just do what we did and raise your children in the bath. Not letting them out until they were fully potty trained saved us a fortune on nappies.
Stop having babies, lots of problems would be solved if we reduced the population.
Did you read all the nappy article / report?
Most of it. There are always going to be assumptions made which means that it's going to be different for different people. You are extremely diligent, and well done to you. Others will be washing a few at a time on a 90 degree wash. In the same way some people change nappies at the merest hint of a dribble and some don't. Loads of variables which is why they made arbitrary assumptions.
I don't have a side in this by the way. My point is that re-usables aren't the slam dunk some perceive them as. With many things, done properly, I'm sure they can be a help.
Stop having babies, lots of problems would be solved if we reduced the population.
Dramatic increase in condoms flushed down toilets?!
Stop having babies, lots of problems would be solved if we reduced the population.
Why not not go the other way? Have a cull of the old folks and redistribute their wealth amongst the poor.
Before anybody starts crying I’m not being serious.......or am I.
Have a cull of the old folks
We just need someone to invent a home incinerator to turn the burning of old people into energy and it's double bubble.
We just need someone to invent a home incinerator to turn the burning of old people into energy and it’s double bubble.
Can we also include people who contribute nothing to society but take all they can get?
Who ? Politicians ?
I also unblock my drains ( 3 houses) of wet wipes every 3 months. Terrible unbiodegradable things.
If it were said that non-biodegradable wet wipes were to be banned in 12 months time then I'm sure that magically a solution would be found.
I'm not for over-regulation, but where companies are doing environmentally damaging things but resisting change because of the huge volume of sales created, that they need to be pushed in the right direction sometimes. They've had the chance for self-regulation but haven't exactly grasped it...!
A friend of mine had his drive way filled with human effluent which exploded out of a man hole in his neighbours’ lawn. Someone had been flushing wet wipes & nappies down the lav!
He can laugh about it now.
Thing is, theres a number of these wiped being sold as "flushable" on the packaging, that everyone else seems to reckon aren't s flushable as claimed.
I cant see how that hasn't resulted in one of the water companies taking legal action against the companies selling them TBH.
Someone had been flushing wet wipes & nappies down the lav!
Who the **** flushes nappies?!
There really is no hope for us as a species 🙁
What you want is a material that quickly decomposes in the presence of water so if flushed they disintegrate? Can you see any issues with making WET wipes from such a material?
They already exist. Kleenex Washlets.
What you want is a material that quickly decomposes in the presence of water so if flushed they disintegrate? Can you see any issues with making WET wipes from such a material?
The are other actions that cause items to break down other than contact with water. An obvious one is making materials particularly tasty to various microbes that wouldn't be found in a sterile packet, but would in, let's say, in the digestive systems of humans.
Either this is distinctly possible or the tin of non disintegrating chick peas in my cupboard is magic!
Did you read all the nappy article / report? Our washables were never tumble dried, not always washed at 60C, used for 2 successive kids and then some passed on for use elsewhere.
Ditto, and we bought them second hand. We also found that washable wipes worked better than wet wipes.
The thing is - the point of having a portable pack of ready-moisten wipes is you can use them to clean things in situations where you don't have access to a tap. I think in pretty much every situation where you can find a toilet to flush a wet wipe down there will be a sink and some bog roll pretty close by.
Its not an issue that needs to be solved in the manufacture of wet wipes - people are just choosing the wrong tool for the job. (bies)
Flushing wipes is an offence under section 111(1)(a) Water Industry Act 1991. Jail time for the offenders.
We just need someone to invent a home incinerator to turn the burning of old people into energy and it’s double bubble.
Already sorted.
It's quite reasonable to debate the relative carbon footprints of disposable nappies vs reusable nappies, but the landfill issue is a huge problem. We must be digging a lot of big holes to accommodate discarded nappies.
Back in my day my nan used to lick the corner of her hankie and use that as a wet wipe!
BITD I used cotton wool to clean baby bottoms and flushed it down the loo. Also used terry nappies, flushed the nappy liners down the loo. Oh joy when both were wearing them.
Never heard of Kleenex Washlets - for bums, babies or paws?
I read today that we need to educate people about what to put in the toilet. Err. Shit and piss.
Here's an amusing alternative take on how to dispose of nappies. Probably best not try this at home though. I wonder if the guy in the OP link got his idea from there...
Shit and piss.
and vomit, obvs.
And occasionally a phone.
washable wipes
A cloth?
I thought this was a thread about the banned folk
A cloth?
They are available in a variety of materials, I can't remember if ours were cloth.
There used to be a you tube channel will it flush... powders do not end up with the best results in the drunken home version....
teabags and whole oranges are also bad choices...
The heru system isn't incineration, its a small batch low temperature pyrolysis plant, that is still going through testing. Like most pyrolysis systems it will have issues with emissions particularly when mixed plastics are in the waste mix. There are several companies chasing the same thing and the other dream was for systems to handle 180104 offensive wastes from healthcare, but it's still cheaper to compact it and landfill than to use any form of alternative treatment/rdf generation technology.
Can't we just tunnel to the earth's core and pour it down there.
Or maybe send it to Iceland where they have volcanos.
Unfortunatly wet wipes are great for all sorts of things: cleaning bike chains, wiping down skirting boards, and cleaning hands before a picnic just to name a few. The official advice for cleaning hard objects such as mobile phones tha might have come into contact with the Salisbury nerve agent was to wipe with wet-wipes, they are just so versatile...................
Can’t we just tunnel to the earth’s core and pour it down there.
we did. Unfortunately they missed the earths core and the tunnel came out in Birkenhead
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">The waste problem:</span>
The problem is that you have to think of environmental issues a little more holistically than that.
-Incineration/pyrolysis produces CO2 (and other pollutants if not done properly)
-Making them out of paper produces methane when they biodegrade, which is worse than CO2 produced by combustion.
Making them out of plastic and then burying it on the other hand, that's actually trapping that carbon in the earth. OK so it takes a bigger hole to put them in than degradeable materials, but the UK isn't short of holes in the ground at the moment.
But if you looked at the same problem in Norway you would reach the opposite conclusion.
-low carbon electricity makes washing nappies much better for the environment
-there are very few options for landfill, and the geography makes transporting waste expensive
IMO, and maybe this is just because I'm 30 something and surrounded by people with babies, but nappies always struck me as an ideal waste stream for collection with food waste to be fed to an anaerobic digester.
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">The actually making usable products problem:</span>
You cant make a paper wet wipe for the same reason you can't make a paper coffee cup, and a paper nappy. It's not a suitable material for holding liquids! Any material that could be disllved and shredded by the action of flushing a toilet isn't going to contain your latte or baby poo. I'm sure alternatives exist (could you make a nappy from coir?) but the problem wit those is once you've sold them to the middle class environmentally conscious market, you've probably run out of coir. Paper and plastic on the other hand are cheap almost limitless in their supply.
.
Water Wipes are 99% water and 1% fruit extract. They feel identical to other ‘plastic’ wipes, but I’m not convinced they’d fare any better if flushed frankly.
We just need someone to invent a home incinerator to turn the burning of old people into energy and it’s double bubble.
We could also process them into food...
Recently I read of an amazing biodegradable replacement for plastics, made from cellulose. It readily breaks down in landfill, etc, just like plants, which also consist of cellulose. I’ve even thought of a name for it, it could be called Cellophane. Oh, wait...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane
cleaning hands before a picnic
Where's the rolley-eyes emoji wotsit. People have survived millions of years of eating with their unwashed hands before the invention of the wet-wipe.
The heru system isn’t incineration, its a small batch low temperature pyrolysis plant, that is still going through testing.
True, but it's still energy recovery from waste, which places it near the bottom of the hierarchy.
Pedant mode on...
People have survived millions of years of eating with their unwashed hands before the invention of the wet-wipe.
I agree that using a wet wipe to clean hands pre-picnic could be avoided, however, average life spans of early humans being around 35 years doesn't necessarily mean I want to copy their habits just because enough of them survived to create modern society!
The same goes for "People have survived for millions of years living in caves and mud huts before the invention of modern housing". I'd still rather sleep in a modern house!
Alright, people managed to have picnics before the invention of wet-wipes (or, for that matter, effing alcohol hand gel)