Last week the UK government announced plan to ban the sale of wet wipes to deal with the problem of fatbergs in sewers. This week we’re rerunning an episode from 2019 where we venture down into the sewer system to see the largest fatberg in Europe.

Underneath cities all over the UK subterranean mountains of calcified fat are gathering in our sewers as fat, oil and grease stick to baby wipes and harden to form a blubbery bacterial blockage. Removing them is dangerous, manual work, putting people and the infrastructure itself at risk. Special projects manager Andy Howard, who is clearing Europe’s biggest fatberg in Blackfriars, London with Lanes Group, explains that removing a fatberg is not necessarily the end of the story. Unless people change their habits, fatbergs will come back. At Whitechapel, in east London they have already witnessed the return of the fatberg.

Hear Andy describe in detail how fatbergs are hacked, drilled and dug out as well as describe a new phenomenon plaguing the sewers – concretebergs.

GUEST

Andy Howard, special projects manager, Lanes Group

A new report from Lanes shows that public awareness of fatbergs is increasing with 77 percent of people knowing what they. However 85 percent of people had never heard of concretebergs! Full survey here.

SPECIAL THANKS

Lanes Group

Thames Water

Water UK

The post #210 Revisited: Return of the Fatbergs first appeared on Engineering Matters.