Sewerage System

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:46): My question is to the Minister for Environment. What measures are being taken to protect the state's sewerage system and what special measures can be taken to prevent panic buying of necessary supplies of toilet paper? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain the question.

Leave granted.

Ms BEDFORD: It won't have escaped anybody's notice that toilet paper has become a very hard item to find in the supermarkets and that without it substitutes that don't break down within our system are being flushed down the toilets, which will inevitably lead to large blockages in the system.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (14:47): I thank the member for Florey for her question, which touches on perhaps an unexpected consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic that is gripping our state and our nation at the moment. The member highlights a situation that our sewerage system is facing with the problems that are faced by the unnecessary panic buying of toilet paper. We know that that is unnecessary. There is a good pipeline of toilet paper available in Australia.

We are encouraging and continuing to put the message out there as a government that that level of panic buying is not required, but of course people are looking to alternatives to toilet paper because of the feeling that it is not available or because of their inability to get hold of toilet paper to date. Those alternatives include, in particular and of greatest concern, wet wipes, but also general tissues and paper towels.

We know that over the last few years the incidence of wet wipes in our sewerage system has become an increasing problem and of course that looks like it's accelerating as a consequence of the COVID-19 problems, so SA Water at the moment is working very hard to get the message out there that these things just cannot be flushed down our toilets. They don't break down.

Interestingly—one of these random facts you learn at these times—regular toilet paper tends to break down in its entirety in around 30 seconds after leaving your toilet, whereas wet wipes barely ever break down and more robust paper towels take an extended period of time, so these just cannot go down our toilets and into our sewerage systems. They cluster together, often not actually far from the house where their origin was, and lead to blockages, which of course is very unpleasant for households, neighbourhoods and the wider community as well. Of course, those that move further through the system can end up causing significant environmental problems.

SA Water has kicked off a healthy sewers campaign. We have had this message in the background for some time, but we have our healthy sewers campaign, which is largely a social media campaign to get that message out into the community and let people know about this. It is also something we will look for other ways to communicate through the mainstream media and potentially through SA Water bills in the future. It is an important issue, it is a symptom of the times and we continue to put the message out there that this is just not acceptable and that we cannot be putting these things into our sewerage systems.