About 20 years ago, when women began to be routinely added to detachments, and then parts of ships company, on US Aircraft carriers, any number of the heads "fenced off" for the ladies ran into a slight overlooked problem. Those clever little metal boxes that one finds in ladies public rest rooms, to receive certain used cotton implements, were absent. Any number of said implements got flushed into a salt water piping system not designed to accomodate such absorbent items.
On the carrier I happened to be on at the time, the Aux Officer reported that the cost to repair one particular jam up related to that issue was just under 10K in US dollars.
I wonder if this latest problem has to do with something similar to. Granted, with twenty years under the belt, one would think that the cultural norm among the ladies in ship's company would be well established ... "you simply don't flush
that down the loo!"