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Sweet Wrappers Gum Up Shoreham Sewer

Our block buster teams find stacks of sweet wrappers blocking a Shoreham sewer.

An unusual find

Our block-buster teams sometimes find unusual items when investigating blocked sewers. They have ranged from crowbars to cat litter. 

This time, after exploring a sewer blockage in Shoreham, our teams found stacks of sweet wrappers to be the cause of the problem.

Our sewer clearance team deal with 50,000 blocked wastewater pipes every year – mostly caused by wet wipes in toilets, or fat, oil and grease down kitchen sinks.

Alex Saunders, Head of Wastewater Networks, said:

“Fortunately my team located the blockage and cleared the sweet wrappers before there was any internal flooding.

When we’re warning people to only put three Ps down the loo – poo, pee and paper – instead of ‘unflushables’ like wet wipes and sanitary products, we include sweet wrappers in that list.

The addition of more than 22,000 artificial intelligence monitors which detect when sewers in blockage ‘hotspots’ are backing up is changing the game and enabling us to get to far more blockages before the problem turns into a crisis."

With more than 40,000km of sewers, it’s absolutely vital that our communities understand not to put the wrong things down loos or sinks – and if there are problems, that they are reported as quickly as possible. 

Sewer blockages are the most common cause of pollution incidents – causing manholes to spill over into watercourses harming wildlife or wrecking gardens. In the worst cases, sewers back up and flood inside properties. Learn more about our fat, oil and grease team and the work they do to prevent blockages.