Sewer doesn’t need greasing up

Be careful what you put down your drains/toilets, because we all might be footing the bill,

Sinks and toilets aren’t trash cans, but you wouldn’t know it by all the junk that ends up in them.

Who hasn’t rinsed cooking grease down the drain? Seems innocuous, but the end result can be a giant glob of congealed grease, like the 15-tonne, bussized “fatberg” discovered in a clogged sewer in London, England.

Sanitary wipes flushed down toilets are just as bad. They can create a wad that can choke even the biggest sewer pipes, especially when trussed up with pieces of dental floss that shouldn’t have been flushed.

Alot of people don’t give much thought to what they put into drains and toilets, a habit the Ontario Clean Water Agency is trying to change by raising awareness about what should and shouldn’t go down the drain.

“Wipes are made with fibrous material, so they don’t break down,” said Amy Lane, manager of marketing and communications for OCWA, which operates water and wastewater treatment facilities for municipalities across Ontario.

“It clogs up the pumps in the sewage facilities, so now you’re talking about infrastructure that has to be replaced” or repaired, which adds to the overall cost of sewage treatment, she said.

The agency runs a campaign to educate people about things that should not go down toilets or drains, but Lane says bad habits are hard to break.

And it’s not just pipes in treatment facilities that are vulnerable. Wipes or paper products flushed down the toilet can block the sewer pipe leading from homes to the larger line under the street, forcing an emergency call to a plumber.

I know a bit about that. A year ago, my teenage son spilled a drink in his basement redoubt and used half a roll of paper towels to sop it up. I went downstairs and spotted a huge wad of paper in the toilet. My blood ran cold.

A basement flood soon followed, along with a panicky call to a plumber with a Roto-Rooter and much shouting from dad. The bill was nearly $400.

“Treating sinks and toilets like trash cans can have major consequences,” Lane said. “It’s not so much any one thing, but you got all these things that come together and stick to each other and form giant clogs.”

The bottom line is that a lot of stuff that people routinely flush without much thought — wipes, floss, Q-tips, cotton balls, feminine hygiene products, facial tissue, paper towels and household hazardous waste — add to the cost of wastewater treatment, and the bill is usually through higher taxes.

So it’s in everyone’s best interests to give a lot more thought to what goes into the sink or down the toilet.

For information and advice on what shouldn’t go down the drain, visit idontflush.ca.