Congress is trying to make “Do Not Flush” labels the law of the land for wipes. Your city’s sewer crew has been begging for it for years, and so, in verse, has the author of a new bathroom-etiquette book.
By Margaret Holloway
There is a rule in the wastewater business that fits on a coaster. Only three things belong in a toilet: pee, poop and toilet paper. Anyone who has ever stood over a backed-up bowl knows how much trouble the other things cause. Utilities have been repeating that rule for years, and they have lately gotten some help from Washington.
A rare thing: bipartisan agreement
In March, the U.S. Senate passed the WIPPES Act, short for the Wastewater Infrastructure Pollution Prevention and Environmental Safety Act, by unanimous consent. The bill requires wipes that are not safe to flush to carry a clear “Do Not Flush” label on the package. The Federal Trade Commission would enforce it.
The bill is led in the Senate by Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, and Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine. In the House, Lisa McClain, a Republican from Michigan, and Kevin Mullin, a Democrat from California, have championed a companion version that passed in June 2025 by voice vote. The Senate’s version of the bill still has to clear the House, and it had not become law as of this writing.
“When non-flushable wipes back up our wastewater system, it hurts our infrastructure, our environment, and our wallets,” Senator Merkley said after the vote.
Several states have moved first. Washington’s labeling law took effect in July 2022. According to the nonwovens industry group INDA, which supports the federal bill, seven states have passed similar laws. If the federal bill is signed, a package sold in Maine and a package sold in Oregon would finally carry the same warning.
The price of one wrong flush
It is easy to dismiss this as a minor housekeeping matter. The numbers argue otherwise.
Judi Gladstone, executive director of the Washington Association of Sewer and Water Districts, has said that utilities across the country spent an estimated $440 million in a year clearing clogs caused by wipes that were flushed. A 2021 survey by her organization and partner groups found that nearly 60 percent of consumers said they had flushed something non-flushable in the previous year.
Those two facts belong together. Most of the people doing it are not villains. They bought a product marketed as gentle, disposable and convenient, and they assumed the toilet was the place for it. Many wipes do not break down the way toilet paper does. They gather in pipes, snag on pumps and bind with grease into the large blockages that utilities call “fatbergs.” The cost of cutting them out lands on the ratepayer.
That is why labeling matters. A clear, consistent warning on the package is a cheap fix to a very expensive problem.
What the clog looks like at home
You do not need to own a sewer system to feel the effect. The bill comes due in the plumbing of ordinary houses.
Laurence Grant, author of the hardcover humor book The Legend of Confuse-us: Timeless Bathroom Wisdom from the Ancient Scholar, opens his book with a confession of that kind. He recounts a catastrophic toilet overflow at a relative’s oceanfront estate in Maine, in which the evidence washed ashore on a very fine Oriental rug. It was, he writes, his first and last visit to the estate. The lesson he takes from it is the one the utilities take: what goes down must actually go away.
The book, published in September 2025, is built around an invented ancient philosopher named Confuse-us, a fictional contemporary of Confucius who delivers bathroom etiquette in rhyme. One of his imagined teachings applies equally to wipes, diapers, sanitary products and anything else that is not on the three-item list:
Thou shalt not cloggeth thy toilet drain unless thou wants to do some plumbing.
It is silly, but the sage has the order of events right. The clog comes first and the plumber second.
Check the flapper while you are at it
Plumbing etiquette has a second front that gets less attention than clogs: the toilet that keeps running.
The Environmental Protection Agency says household leaks waste nearly one trillion gallons of water a year across the country. The average home loses more than 9,300 gallons a year to leaks, and about 9 percent of homes leak 50 gallons or more a day. A worn flapper in a toilet tank can leak thousands of gallons annually without making a sound.
The old advice is to jiggle the handle, and Grant’s book devotes a whole chapter to that move. It is a fine stopgap, but it is a stopgap. The EPA suggests a simple test: add a few drops of food coloring to the tank, wait ten minutes, and see whether color appears in the bowl. If it does, you have a leak. Flush right away to avoid staining the tank. The agency also recommends checking the flapper periodically and replacing it at least every five years. A replacement flapper is an inexpensive part, and the savings are real. The EPA says fixing easily corrected leaks can cut a water bill by about 10 percent.
A short list for your house
You do not have to wait for Congress. Here is what to do in the meantime.
Keep the three-item rule. Pee, poop and toilet paper. Everything else goes in the trash, including wipes, even those labeled “flushable,” along with diapers, sanitary pads, tampons, cotton balls and floss. Utilities regularly give this advice, and local public works departments across the country have been repeating it.
Put a lidded wastebasket in every bathroom. Guests do not know your plumbing. If there is no obvious place for a used pad or a wipe, the toilet is the only option left. A small basket with a lid, within reach, removes the temptation. This is the cheapest bit of hospitality a host can offer.
Keep a plunger where people can find it. A plunger in plain view is a sign of a prepared household. It also lets a guest fix a problem quietly instead of walking out and hoping nobody notices.
Read the package. When wipes eventually carry uniform labeling nationwide, trust it. Until then, treat the package with suspicion and the toilet with respect.
Test your tank. Do the food-coloring check once a year. It takes less time than a commercial break.
Small habits, large systems
It is tempting to think of infrastructure as something done by governments and large companies. Sewers say otherwise. They are a shared system that works only when millions of people make small decisions correctly. Each flush is a tiny vote for the common good, or against it.
The WIPPES Act will not solve everything. People will still flush things they should not. But a plain warning on the package is a good start, and it is hard to name another bill that has won the votes of both parties in both chambers while asking so little of anyone.
Meanwhile, the rule on the coaster has not changed. Pee, poop and paper. Everything else belongs in the trash, and the next person to use your bathroom will thank you for it.
The Legend of Confuse-us: Timeless Bathroom Wisdom from the Ancient Scholar, by Laurence Grant, is available on Amazon. More at confuse-us.com.
Sources: Senator Merkley’s office on Senate passage of the WIPPES Act (S. 1092, March 2026); INDA statement via Textile World (March 2026); Kent Reporter on Washington’s labeling law; U.S. EPA WaterSense, Fix a Leak Week.
