At Jacksonville's Humpty Dumpty Childcare Center, Rose Glover changes hundreds of diapers a day.
"hundreds," she said. "And over a month period, thousands."
So it's a good thing she doesn't flush her wipes down the toilet - no matter what the packaging says.
"People tend to think when you flush it, it's gone," said Thea Hughes, General Manager of the Jacksonville Wastewater Utility. "And they don't really understand where it goes after it's flushed."
Hughes says people are flushing too many wipes and they are clogging pipes, pumps and sometimes even making it all the way to the wastewater facility.
"You could see sewage in your yard or in your home because of this," said Hughes.
Although the packaging says the product, "breaks up like toilet paper after flushing" and is "safe for sewer and septic systems," Hughes says it's not the case. The wastewater plant is spending tens of thousand of dollars in repairs and counting because of these wipes.
"If these costs continue to go up for us, then we would of course have to pass that on to the rate payers," said Hughes.
So Jacksonville city leaders are urging citizens to take a tip from Humpty Dumpty Daycare.
"If we flushed them and everything, that would probably clog up ours and that would be extra money that we would have to have some maintenance men come out and fix it," said Glover.
Because there's no point in flushing your money down the toilet, too.
Fox16 reached out to four leading companies that sell flushable wipes. None have responded with comment yet, although environmental groups are investigating whether this problem is a case of false advertising.
