Isn’t that what unregulated capitalism (eg pure libertarianism) is about? Their only responsibility is to shareholders, including using the laws to their best advantage.
Sometimes there can be conflicts between free market or market ideology, what some call red tape (eg regulations of whatever type for whatever reasons) and community good, can there not?
I wonder in amazement why government has not banned the product or regulated and insisted They are not to be flushed.
Or should I wonder at all? 
…why they cannot make a product that works as advertised, no semantics allowed. Even if not exactly the same, but close enough for the purpose and market acceptance?
After a disappointing result in court for the ACCC, water authorities are urging people not to flush wipes:
From the “everyone knows it is wrong but the lawyers won” department. It seems incredible that a company can run such an argument which seems to be so transparently won on a point of law and not care what the community/consumer thinks. I’m tempted to ask, do they really think we are that stupid, but sadly this will blow over and probably the answer is, collectively we are.
Perhaps between CHOICE and some agreeable water authorities some testing could be done to prove this once and for all? in the process, a test regime for wipes to be deemed truly flushable and advertised as such (as a precursor to ‘flushing legislation’ perhaps). This wouldn’t have to be at the scale of the big farms - macerators are employed at various levels of the ‘supply chain’, especially where downstream is high pressure (as I understand it) - so conceivably a test environment should be relatively easy to set up and of course KC would cheerfully and freely donate tonnes of their product for testing, given they are completely flushable.
As a side note, I’m thinking KC’s legal team should be the among cleanest people in the country, given that KC make a product specifically designed to clean them?
Won on a point of law is sometimes referred to as the rule of law. Who would want it otherwise? Those who make the laws failed, and have an opportunity, possibly more than once, to ‘fix,’ them.
I didn’t see it that way, that there is a problem with the law. It looks to me like the ACCC messed up their case and gave the defendant room to wiggle.
It could also look like the case was decided on ‘might’ versus ‘does and did’ and the legal requirement of proving same. Regardless, legislation stating anything sold as flushable has to be approved by the local sewage authority, with defensible criteria, prior to being offered for sale should fix it, should it not?
Deposit one or more “fat bergs” from a sewerage system for the judiciary to see the wipes for themselves. I can see this happening in the next court case.
It is a positive move. The draft standard is DR AS/NZS 5328. Anyone wishing to review the standard and provide comments can do so here…
https://www.standards.govt.nz/develop-standards/commenting-on-draft-standards/joint-draft-standards/
I love what they picked to make a point in the PR.
According to Urban Utilities, every year 120 tonnes of wipes, the equivalent in weight of 34 hippopotami, is removed from the network.
Wouldn’t it be a more impressive number and easier to relate to if portrayed as 3 million budgies? or 60 Land Rovers?
And if they have to use a hippo, the correct English plural is hippopotamuses. 
Either way, the system is working … slowly. The ACCC lost in court, so the standards are changing so that hopefully a company will not in the future get away with describing something as “flushable” that is not in practice flushable.
Perhaps they should have enshrined in law “the three Ps”.
Ms Hartley said while the standard was being developed it was still important that consumers remember to flush only “the three Ps — pee, poo and paper”.
(where paper of course means only toilet paper)
Do we really need years of litigation for this?
According to multiple dictionaries, so is hippopotami
Hippopotami is also acceptable to Messrs Flanders and Swann.
Flushable wipes are still available not sure if are suitable or not. Hope they are ok for anyone buying them
