One logo decides whether a wipe may go down the toilet
The packaging often says 'flushable'. That wording is not the rule that counts — there is one mark that is.
A wipe feels like toilet paper, so surely it breaks down too. The difference is in the fibre: paper falls apart in water, while a wipe is engineered to stay intact when wet. That is exactly the property you buy it for — and exactly the property that forms a plug further along the pipe.
Dutch consumer authority Milieu Centraal is blunt about which wipes belong in the residual waste bin rather than the toilet: bottom wipes, cleaning wipes, baby wipes, face wipes and make-up removal wipes. That covers the entire category most households keep in the bathroom.
There is one exception, and it is recognisable by a mark. Milieu Centraal states that only moist toilet paper carrying the black-and-white logo of a toilet bowl without a person may be flushed. If that logo is absent, the claim on the front of the pack does not count — it is residual waste, however soft the wording on the box.
Why this keeps going wrong: a single wipe rarely causes a blockage on its own. Milieu Centraal describes how liquid fat congeals inside the sewer pipe and sticks to it, after which other things that do not belong there cling to that in turn — the opening narrows and the sewer slowly silts up. The wipe is usually not the culprit but the last straw. Once it is stuck, having a toilet unblocked costs € 95-195 and a blockage in the sewer € 125-350; every rate is in the price index.