ALISSA’S ECO-ADVICE

Eco-investigator and New Jersey native, Alissa MacMillan, seeks to find answers to your everyday questions about tough decisions we all face, when acting in the best interests for the environment. A freelance writer and philosophy lecturer, Alissa is a former features reporter for the New York Daily News and has been living in County Limerick for eight years. Your queries on all matters environmental, are welcome. This week, she focuses on: DOWN THE DRAIN

Q: My husband and I have an ongoing argument about whether we should put coffee grinds down the drain. I’ve always heard they are good for the pipes, but he disagrees. Which of us is right?

A: I hope you didn’t put money down on a bet, because your husband would win: coffee grinds, tea leaves, and a lot of food waste shouldn’t go down the drain.

I spoke with Margaret Attridge, Operations Manager at Uisce Éireann (formerly Irish Water), where they have led ongoing ‘Think Before You Pour’ and ‘Think Before You Flush’ campaigns, in conjunction with An Taisce’s Clean Coasts programme, raising public awareness about what happens when we send things like coffee grinds down the sink.

So, what does happen? The grinds clump, they congeal, they clog up the pipes, from your house all the way through the system. Equally bad offenders are what they’ve nicknamed FOGs – fats, oils, and grease – which might seem like they’d slide right through but, especially in colder weather, form into a solid mass that can block things up, even if you use washing-up liquid or pour hot water down the sink.

As Attridge describes it, what gets into the pipes – from kitchen waste to what comes through the toilets and shower – all has to go through the wastewater network. While your flushed facial or baby wipe (the bête noir of the Irish sewage world) might not seem like such a big deal, “someone else puts their grease down the pipe, that’s amalgamated with wipes, and all of this creates a congealed mass,” she says. This is what’s known on the street as “fatburgs,” the big congealed blobs of blockage which are tough to deal with.

As for what happens to the standard sludge, it makes its way to the treatment plant where there is a screening and “the most solid material is removed there and taken to landfill,” Attridge explains. Every month in Ireland there are 195 tonnes of wipes and other items removed from the wastewater treatment system, says Attridge. “That’s fourteen double-decker buses of wipes removed from wastewater every month.”

FLUSHING BEHAVIOUR

This all impacts the environment. It generates a huge amount of landfill waste, often with items like coffee and tea grinds and foodstuffs that could be composted, and “with things like plastic items and contact lens, they have potential to get through the system and get out onto the ocean,” Attridge says.

The more sludge in the treatment system, the more associated costs, especially maintenance and energy costs in the complex process of cleaning the system from the “ragging” that happens, when pumps aren’t operating properly or don’t pump at capacity because of clogging.

“Blockages can also cause flooding, resulting in damage to properties or can result in overflows to streams, rivers or coastal waters causing fish kills or impacting on wildlife,” says Attridge. “Uisce Éireann constantly monitor overflows and has sewer cleaning programs to prevent overflows.”

Last year, in addition to general maintenance, Uisce Éireann responded to about 10,000 complaints from customers about blockages. But their campaign seems to be making a difference: “Results of surveys on the nation’s flushing behaviour show that since 2018 we have seen a positive 38% reduction in people flushing wipes down the toilet. This was 18% in 2018, now 11% in 2022,” Attridge says. It’s still about one in ten, but there has been some progress.

As for the toilet, you can only flush “the three ps”: pee, poo, and paper, and never things like wipes, sanitary products, dental floss, medicines, condoms, plasters, hair, cotton, nappies, and cigarette butts.

COPOSTING GOLD

And very little should go down the sink. The campaign suggests you use a sink strainer to catch foodstuffs and scrape peelings or food waste into the bin or, ideally, send what you can to the compost pile. For oily or greasy pots and pans, clean them off with a kitchen wipe before washing or putting them in the dishwasher. As for the oil itself, it can be composted by, for example, being stored in a cardboard egg carton and both tossed in together, saved in a glass jar when it’s cooled and reused, or saved until it’s cooled and thrown in the bin.

Coffee grinds, when put in the compost pile, are a valuable source of nitrogen, so if your husband was also suggesting you compost your grinds, he really did win the bet, with bonus points, because coffee grinds are composting gold.

Direct your eco related queries for Alissa to info@avondhupress.ie (with ‘Alissa’s Eco-advice’ in the subject line)