It’s World Toilet Day! Think before you Flush!
| November 19, 2011 | Filled under Campaigns, Yorkshire Water |
IT’S WORLD TOILET DAY TODAY! We kid you not! It’s aimed to be quite a fun day – but it does have its serious side: It’s about highlighting the fact that 2.6 billion people live every day without access to proper, clean sanitation. Imagine life without a toilet! No toilets in your home or at work, no public toilets, no toilets anywhere. Imagine the mess. Imagine the disease!
You can find out more at www.worldtoilet.org
THINK BEFORE YOU FLUSH! To coincide with the 10th anniversary of World Toilet Day (Saturday 19th November), Yorkshire Water is urging the people not to use their toilet as a rubbish bin.
Every day, thousands of items such as nappies, sanitary products, wet wipes and cotton wool buds have to be removed from waste water entering treatment works across the region. Yorkshire Water spends millions of pounds each year removing thousands of blockages along its 54,000km sewer network, predominantly made up of such items, gelled together by fats, oils and grease.
By not flushing such items down the toilet, customers are also doing themselves a favour. Last year alone, more than a thousand properties in the region were internally flooded as a result of sewers being blocked by such items.
Simeon Turner, sewer flooding project manager, comments: “ It’s all to easy to get rid of items such as wipes and sanitary products by putting them down the loo, but we want customers to think before they flush and remember that such actions can cause blockages in our sewers which can, and do, lead to homes – including often their own – being flooded with raw sewage which is a deeply unpleasant situation and one we want no customer to suffer.”
Christmas trees, soft toys - retrieved from sewage works
The company is also calling for packaging on items such as baby wipes and sanitary products to carry clearer disposal information, such as the ‘Bag It, And Bin It, Don’t Flush It’ icon, to reduce customer confusion. In some cases, packaging actually contains grossly inaccurate information by stating that products can be flushed away.
It is estimated that over 2 billion sanitary items such as condoms, tampons and wipes are flushed down the toilet every year in the UK.
More unusual items which have had to be removed from Yorkshire’s sewers in recent years include a trolley, television, kitchen sink, prosthetic limb, handcuffs and even on one occasion, a live dog.
Yorkshire Water is spending approximately £100 million across Yorkshire over the next four years to help reduce the risk of sewer flooding from both inside and outside people’s homes. This money is being spent on proactive work, replacing and renewing any problem sewers, surveying the sewer network and continuing the work to clear blockages and keep sewers flowing freely.
To find out more about what can happen to homes as a result of this type of blockage, get advice on correct disposal and get lots of great giveaways visit, yorkshirewater.com/dirty
Customers can also get their hands on a free fat cake making kit giving them a great way to recycle left over fat rather than pouring it down the sink whilst helping to feed the birds at the same time simply request on at yorkshirewater.com/fatcake
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