If you don’t know what a fatberg is, you’ve probably never had sewage flooding your home (apologies to anyone who happens to be eating).
Fatbergs are giant grease balls that are formed when fat attaches to sewer walls, slowly accumulating other items that should never have been flushed away, such as wet wipes.
These fat balls get bigger and bigger and set as hard as concrete, causing huge blockages, which cause flooding as well as sewage backflow into around three thousand homes in the UK per year. The cost in repairs is around £100 million.
In 2017 a fatberg in Whitechapel, London, made headlines – it was longer than two Wembley football pitches and weighed the same as 11 double-decker buses.
So if you are among the half of the population that unwittingly contributes to fatbergs by pouring fats down the sink or drain, then please think again.
Can I pour away milk?
Some people think that flushing fats away with hot water and washing up liquid makes them magically disappear. Wrong. Instead, thousands of tonnes of fats, oils and grease flow into our sewers each year – a disaster in the making.
It’s not a nice subject to talk about but education is vital. Many people are not aware that even small amounts of food substances, such as crumbs, butter, margarine, lard, cooking sauce, should never go down the drain. It’s not always obvious – did you know that milk is fatty enough to contribute to a blockage?
What can we do about it?
We need to spread the word about what a great resource used cooking oil is. Did you know there are facilities at hundreds of household recycling centres across the country for the collection of used cooking oil?
The collected oil is refined into a biofuel to create green electricity. Check whether your local site has such a facility and if not ask the local councillors responsible for recycling to look into providing one.
Our family has been recycling our used cooking oil this way since 2010 when I read in the local press about a collection facility at my nearest recycling site. I’m surprised more people don’t know about this.
The oil is collected by vehicles converted to run on the same biofuel and taken to purpose-made generators. Once refined, the biofuel has huge potential – one litre generates enough clean electricity to make 240 cups of tea, while one tonne can provide enough to power the average home for a year.
I used to pour the used oil into various bottles and containers but this was quite messy and I just had to hope the filled containers wouldn’t fall over in the car on the way to the recycling site. Life became easier when we got a purpose-built kitchen oil container (pictured) that enables us to safely store the oil until the next trip to the recycling centre. Read more about the container here.
Pouring used cooking oil into the kitchen oil container to store
Carrying oil safely in the car
Adding the oil to the collection facility at the local household recycling centre
What about wet wipes?
There was good news for the environment earlier this year when the Government announced that wet wipes containing plastic are to be banned from sale in the UK.
Wet wipes flushed down toilets cause 93 per cent of sewer blockages and in the UK we use 11 billion of them a year. Most wet wipes contain 90 per cent plastic, which is almost as bad as putting a plastic bag down the loo.
The BBC nature documentary Blue Planet brought the environmental impact of wet wipes to the public’s attention in 2017, creating demand for flushable products.
But many wet wipes labelled as “flushable” contain hidden plastics, and do not actually break down properly in the drain despite advertising claims.
According to Peter Henley, of the Water Research Centre, international testing measures are needed to avoid cheap, non-verified products that don’t disintegrate well (even if they are technically non-plastic and biodegradable) coming onto the market.
Your best bet is to bin every wipe. The plastic ban should mean that even if wipes do end up going down the drain for whatever reason, any damage caused will be minimised.
Boots and Aldi have already stopped selling wet wipes containing plastic.
Plastics in seas and oceans
But wet wipes aren’t the only nasties containing hidden plastics that get flushed away, and the damage doesn’t end in sewers.
Millions of pieces of plastic end up in rivers and seas every day, causing huge damage to wildlife and the environment.
These plastics are found in:
Disposable gloves
Nappies
Facemasks
Cotton buds
Contact lenses
Plasters
Bandages
Razor blades
Dental floss
Period products
Condoms
Plastic in the oceans breaks down into microplastics, which poison the ecosystem. When plastic in the water does eventually break down from exposure to the sun, it releases greenhouse gases in the form of methane and ethylene.
If you’re appalled by this situation, you might want to join this month’s Unblocktober campaign. This is an annual month-long drive to inform people how they can help to save the sewers and seas.
For information, tips and advice see Unblocktober | A month to Save Our Sewers and Seas
Julie
