Toilet paper is made with short fibers to be strong enough for use, but to disintegrate quickly to reduce the impact on your plumbing. Of course if the toilet paper you are using is triple ply, super quilted, it will take longer to disintegrate, which means it will be more bulky and take up more room in your plumbing. Toilet paper will disintegrate before it makes it to the waste water treatment plant. Most toilet paper will disintegrate within a matter of seconds once in agitating water.

Wet wipe, or "flushable" wipes do not disintegrate quickly, and remain fully intact when arriving to the waste water treatment plant. In fact, in some tests, they barely began to break down after 35 minutes of rapid agitation.

Avoid flushing any type of wipe, "flushable" or otherwise, down the toilet. This will prevent costly clogs and environmental damaging overflows in the municipal waste water system. Make sure they are properly disposed of in the trash.

• Article 1 on Flushable wipes
• Article 2 on Flushable wipes