What is a fatberg ?
A fatberg is a huge mass of waste similar to a huge rock created by non-biodegradable solids being flushed into the drainage system. Typical solids that form fatbergs are wet wipes, nappies, fat, oil and grease. Fatbergs have appeared across the world in sewers and are both time consuming and very expensive to break down.
How are fatbergs removed ?
Drainage engineers have to initially break up the fatberg into smaller chunks using high- pressure jetters. It’s a very messy business too as a lot of the gunk has to be manually removed before being sucked up into trucks for correct disposal at an appropriate site.
How to avoid fatbergs
A pretty simple rule is to remember that toilets are designed to flush only waste such as faeces, urine and loo roll. Any other bio-degradable items such as cat litter should also be fine – but wet wipes, nappies and kitchen roll must all be avoided. Similarly avoid putting down your kitchen sink food that’s hard to break down eg starchy foods such as pasta, or egg shells, coffee, and especially fat, grease and oil (“FOG”) which cannot mix with water.
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