Are you feeding the fatbergs this Unblocktober?
October means wet pavements, cosy jumpers, and Halloween. And since 2019 it's also meant Unblocktober, the UK's month-long campaign dedicated to protecting our sewers and watercourses.
Unblocktober invites all of us to take a second look at our everyday household habits and make a few changes to keep everything running smoothly. We all love a bit of a spooky scare in October, but nobody wants a fatberg crashing the party!
So how can we do our bit?
The Great British Sewer System: What’s the Problem?
Beneath the streets of the UK, there’s a vast labyrinth of pipes and sewers that quietly support our daily lives.
Our current sewer system was pioneered by civil engineers in London in the late 1800s, delivering clean water to homes, taking away waste, and vastly improving public health. This lifesaving network was steadily expanded, and today 96% of the UK population are connected to mains water and sewerage.
The early architects of these sanitation marvels would be alarmed if they could see the current state of them today. From wet wipes to leftover cooking oil, UK households are sending all sorts of nasties down the drains, and it’s clogging things up.
Most of the Naked Sprout team are based in Sussex, where engineers are dealing with 20,000 blockages per year. You can see how your area is faring on Unblocktober’s interactive map.
When it comes to blockages, the most notorious culprit is the dreaded fatberg. A fatberg is a tangled mass of fat, oil, and solid matter like wet wipes and nappies, that has formed together into a lump and is blocking pipes. One of the largest ever fatbergs recorded in the UK, dubbed "Fatty McFatberg" was located beneath Whitechapel in London. This absolute monster weighed the same as 11 double-decker buses, and took a team of eight people several weeks to break down.
Without a big change in habits, the next five years could see many more fatbergs contributing to 1.3 million blockages, with a total repair bill of 500 million.
And the damage isn’t just to water infrastructure itself. Climate change has meant that the UK has become wetter over the last few decades. With a higher water table, and more outbreaks of heavy rain, blockages in the sewer system leave excess water with nowhere to go, leading to floods and damages to homes and businesses.
What should never go down the drain?
“Unblocktober” was launched in 2019 as a public awareness campaign, to encourage people to look again at what they’re flushing and washing away.
Most of us do our best to be mindful about what goes down our drains, but there are a surprising number of things that are commonly flushed or poured down the drain that shouldn’t be.
Here’s the low down on what shouldn’t go down:
In the kitchen:
Cooking oil and fats
If you’re pouring the remnants of your Sunday fry-up down the kitchen sink, stop! Grease and oil might seem harmless in their hot, liquid state, but they cool down and solidify as they travel through the pipes. Once that happens, they cling to the insides of the sewers, trapping other particles and forming blockages.
Food scraps
Food scraps like grains of cooked rice or chunks of potato, when sent down the sink, accumulate to clog your pipes, especially when combined with grease and oil!
Our tip: Composting your food waste is a great idea if you have a garden or local composting bins. We’d also recommend giving your plates a last wipe with a bit of kitchen roll (ideally chic unbleached kitchen roll!) before they go in the sink!
In the bathroom:
Wet wipes (even “flushable” ones)
It’s tempting to assume that because a packet says "flushable," you can send those wipes swirling down the toilet with a clean conscience. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Even so-called flushable wipes don’t break down the way toilet paper does.
The UKs “fine to flush” label was recalled for this very reason - wet wipes are more durable that toilet paper, and the best bet is not to flush any of them. South West Water estimates that 200,000 wet wipes are flushed every single day in their region alone, all of them should be going in the bin!
Sanitary Products
Tampons and sanitary towels are designed to absorb and expand, making them a menace to plumbing. Flushing them down the toilet can lead to serious blockages and is also harmful to marine life when they escape into waterways.
Cotton buds and dental floss
Cotton buds may seem small and harmless, but they’re one of the main culprits when it comes to sewer blockages. They don’t break down in water and can nest together into a lattice of fibres that will snare other debris. Dental floss has a similar impact, tangling up into tough knots inside the pipes.
Our tip: Keep a small bin near your toilet for non-flushable items like wipes, sanitary products, and cotton buds. That way, you can toss them in the bin without giving it another thought.
What kind of paper is best?
Once we’ve cut out the things that shouldn’t be flushed or washed away, we’re left with a short list of three things that can be - pee, poo, and paper!
The first two make sense, they are after all what our modern plumbing is designed for. But why does toilet roll get a pass when other types of tissue and personal care items are strictly bin-only?
As we’ve covered in a previous post, toilet paper made from pulp has short, highly absorbent fibres that will quickly unravel and disintegrate when they become wet. This means it keeps its strength when it's dry, but starts breaking down as soon as it hits the water in your toilet, and breaks down completely with the motion of flushing in your pipes.
If you want to go one step further in protecting the environment, consider switching to an environmentally friendly toilet paper made without bleach. At Naked Sprout the water we use at our factory is kept clean enough that we can return it to the river after manufacturing. We also keep our products free from dyes or fragrances, and we don’t include any plastic in our packaging, so waterways are free from extra junk.
Conclusion: flushing wisely
Aaaand flush!
Unblocktober is a great chance to pick up a few small habits that can protect our drains and watercourses.
Binning the non-flushables, being careful about what goes down the sink, and making sure there’s only three things going into the loo will make a big difference to the pipes and sewers that keep our lives flowing smoothly. The fatbergs won’t know what hit them!
Want welcome the Autumn with unbleached toilet roll that won’t trouble the waters?
