The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has launched legal action against the manufacturers of “flushable” wet wipes over allegations that they falsely claimed the products would break down in the sewerage system.
The ACCC filed separate actions against Kimberly-Clark Australia and Pental Products in the federal court on Monday on the grounds that the label “flushable” had misled customers to believe that thewipes could be safely flushed down the toilet, just like toilet paper.
Unlike toilet paper, said the ACCC chairman, Rod Sims, the wipes did not disintegrate when flushed and could clog the sewer.
“Australian water authorities face significant problems when non-suitable products are flushed down the toilet as they contribute to blockages in household and municipal sewerage systems,” Sims said.
Water authorities in New South Wales have blamed disposable wet wipes for causing “fatbergs” – big clumps of non-flushable items that coalesce with fat and oils to form sewer-blocking clogs.
In February a one-tonne fatberg took out the pumping station near Lake Macquarie and had to be partially removed by hand, bucket by bucket.
“Wet wipes are responsible for around 80% of all sewer blockages in Hunter Water’s system,” the corporation’s spokesman, Nick Kaiser, told Fairfax Media at the time.
In June the consumer group Choice blamed the fatbergs on wet wipes that had been marketed as “flushable”, saying that despite manufacturers changing the formula to make the wipes disintegrate more readily they still held together after “hours of testing”.
Choice gave “flushable” wipes a Shonky award in 2015, saying claims the product could be safely flushed away were false and misleading. That award tipped off the ACCC’s investigation.
The ACCC claims that between May 2011 and May 2013, Kimberly-Clark advertised its Kleenex Cottonelle Flushable Cleansing Cloths as being “completely flushable”, “able to be flushed in the toilet” and able to “break down in sewerage system or septic tank”. It has also alleges that the products were falsely advertised as being made in Australia.
Its allegations against Pental are that between February 2011 and August 2016 it advertised its White King Power Clean Flushable Toilet Wipes as a “flushable toilet wipe” and claimed they were “made from a specially designed material, which will disintegrate in the sewage system when flushed, just like toilet paper”.
In a statement to Fairfax Media, Kimberley-Clark Australia said it would fight the allegations on the basis that “our claims that these products are flushable are accurate”.
“These products and the current Kleenex Cottonelle Flushable Wipes meet or exceed the requirements set out in [internationally recognised] flushability guidelines, which are the only widely accepted guidelines for assessing flushability,” it said.
Pental said it had inherited the packaging from another company and removed the claims about the product disintegrating like toilet paper after conducting its own review in 2014. “This was well prior to any ACCC investigation,” it said.
“Pental is therefore disappointed that the ACCC has decided to issue proceedings, despite Pental’s proactive approach in removing the claims of concern to the ACCC and the fact that other larger multinational companies continue to sell similar products labelled as ‘flushable’”.
