Sewermen's Christmas Plea
24 December 2010, 06:00
A group of Sewermen from Thames Water have recorded a new version of Good King Wenceslas - to try and stop people putting fat from their Christmas dinner down their sinks.
According to the Water Company - which looks after drains in Hertfordshire - around 500 tonnes of lard will end up in their sewers this month - that's about the same mass as one million Christmas Puddings. They say around 25 percent more fat goes down sewers in December than at other times of the year - it then causes blockages when it cools down and sets.
Daniel Brackley - who's a Sewer Inspector for Thames Water - told Heart:
"We deal with 55,000 blockages every year. That costs £12 million pounds a year, which is obviously customer's money that we could spend so much more wisely than clearing blockages, because if people dispose of their waste properly they wouldn't even occur in the first place."
He told us what a sewer's like after we've all had our Christmas Dinner:
"It's got a really warm smell to the fat and it smells very off. It causes quite a mess for us as well - it sticks to the wall. Once it starts building up on the wall, fat attracts fat."
For each hit that the YouTube video gets before the end of January, Thames Water is donating 1p to the charity WaterAid - which helps improve access to safe water and sanitation for some of the world's poorest people. (Up to 200,000 hits)