Earth Day is something that our team at Pristine is incredibly passionate about supporting. While this annual event is a day that we believe everyone should pay attention to, our company strives to play our part every single day in protecting our planet and creating eco-friendly products. We wanted to share with you how our toilet paper spray and body cleansing sprays play a part on Earth Day and every day of the year.
The Issues Caused by Wet Wipes for the Environment
Wet wipes are something that a huge percentage of the population still relies on to keep their bottoms and bodies clean, but wet wipes can cause or contribute to a wide range of issues for the environment. You may be aware that many brands of wet wipes are made from plastic resins like polyester, polypropylene, or rayon fibers. Some "flushable" brands can be made with cotton, wood pulp, or bamboo, and are formed into nonwoven sheets. Regardless of the material the wet wipe is made from, and regardless of whether a wet wipe is labeled as "flushable", they all have a nasty reputation of clogging toilets and residential plumbing.
A clogged toilet or clogged pipe is just the tip of the fatberg. If you've been flushing wet wipes and have managed to escape a clogged toilet or pipe, you may be sending the problem down the line into your city sewer.
Wet wipes that make it past residential plumbing enter city sewer systems where they join with fats, oils, and grease (known as "FOG") and create the dreaded fatbergs. Fatbergs are as disgusting as they sound. A fatberg is a conglomeration of all those wet wipes that are being flushed (both the "flushable" and non-flushable kind), which become bonded together by the fats, oils, and grease that are also floating through the city sewer systems. These fatbergs can become massive in size. A fatberg the size of a Boeing 747 aircraft was discovered in the London sewer. Here in the USA numerous cities are fighting fatbergs in their sewer systems and spending millions of dollars in equipment and manpower to remove wet wipes from sewer systems.
A common misconception is that what is flushed into the sewers stays in the sewers or simply disappears. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. However, those handy wet wipes that are being flushed don't seem to be disappearing or disintegrating as they are alleged to do on the wet wipe packaging and in branding.
Wet wipes bind together with the help of fats, oils, and grease. Fats, oils, and grease cling to more wet wipes. Pretty soon you have an enormous conglomeration that is clogging sewers. “Fatbergs work like the clogging of a heart artery,” says Kimberly Worsham, founder of FLUSH (Facilitated Learning for Universal Sanitation and Hygiene). “If we don’t move them, they start to build up, and the sewer system has something like the equivalent of a heart attack.” When wastewater and sewage is blocked or inhibited from flowing through the sewers, the waste in the sewer backs up into your home and the surrounding environment, including land, waterways, and wetlands.
A huge focus of Earth Day is on our daily consumption of single-use products, and wet wipes are one of the many single-use products you may be using each day. Here is where Pristine fits in. It is our mission to curate and provide more eco-friendly alternatives wet wipes and body wipes. Our spray alternatives to wet wipes work with regular toilet paper that is designed to breakdown in the plumbing and sewer systems. The toilet paper plus Pristine duo won't contribute to fatbergs or clogs. Our spray alternative to body cleansing wipes are simply sprayed directly onto the body or wiped off with a reusable or biodegradable cloth. To boot, our bottles are reusable and recyclable.
By switching to Pristine's spray alternatives to wet wipes and body cleansing wipes, you can stop flushing or tossing wet wipes away, which can endanger the environment and end up in landfills for hundreds of years as very few of them are biodegradable or readily breakdown as needed.
Creating an Eco-Friendly Product
When we first came up with the idea for Pristine, a huge emphasis of our research and development work was to create an eco-friendly product. The aim behind our toilet paper spray is to reduce the population’s reliance on single-use plastics, which is something we should focus on not just on Earth Day, but every day. The mission behind our company was to find a more natural and eco-friendly way to wipe, reducing the burden that both flushable and non-flushable wipes place on residential plumbing, sewer systems, landfills, and the environment.
Our mission is to curate more eco-friendly spray alternatives to wet wipes to help reduce and hopefully eliminate the use of single-use plastic wet wipes and reduce general waste created by the nature of a single-use product. Beyond our products, we also hope to reduce our impact on the earth by reusing, reducing, and recycling when we can.
Our Product Packaging
Earth Day hopes to shine a light on the ways in which companies around the world are operating, with the aim of reducing everyone’s impact on the environment. The large amount of packaging that some products employ is unnecessary, adding to the endless amount of waste that’s sent to landfills. That’s why we’ve tried to play a part in helping to reduce waste, for example, by using bottles that are made from recycled or recyclable material. We also extend this to our packaging and shipping material, avoiding bulking up your delivery with unnecessary materials, that may look pretty, but that will be immediately discarded.
Why Are Wet Wipes Such an Issue Now?
People have been using wet wipes for over 30 years, but it’s only recently that we’ve really started to pay attention to the damage they are doing to our planet. In the past 13 years, the demand for wet wipes has increased by up to 50%, which means the number of wet wipes ending up in residential plumbing systems, sewers, and water treatment facilities is at an all-time high. These facilities were not built to handle the number of wet wipes they receive each day.
While Earth Day is something that we are always thrilled to celebrate each year, we believe that every day gives us a chance to work to make our world a better place. Here at Pristine, we strive to create a product and packaging that has as little impact on the planet as possible while also offering you an innovative and effective solution to your hygiene needs. By making a simple switch away from wet wipes this year, you can play your part in protecting our planet for future generations.