Scottish Water campaign urges north-east people to bin wet wipes
Scottish Water’s sewer response teams – who clear about 36,000 blockages per year across the country – are adopting a bold new tactic to urge customers to “bin the wipes” that cause them.
To highlight the scale and nature of the problem caused by people wrongly flushing wipes down toilets, the company’s fleet of sewer response teams will be equipped with new signage about their work which they will display before leaving a street stencil on the pavement saying “Another blockage cleared. Flushing wipes blocks pipes. Bin the wipes.”
Scottish Water clears about 100 blockages per day and wipes are found in 80 per cent of them. It costs about £216 to clear an individual blockage and about £23,000 per day to attend to them across Scotland.
The utility calls on people to dispose of wipes in the bin, along with other bathroom items such as period products and cotton buds and to flush only the 3Ps down toilets – pee, poo and (toilet) paper.
The new signage and street stencils, which are part of Scottish Water’s ongoing Nature Calls campaign designed to encourage people to help prevent blockages which can cause flooding of properties and pollution, will be used across the country at every blockage the company attends to encourage people to follow its advice and bin the wipes.
This will include towns which are hotspot areas for blockages.
The company has already visited Peebles, Galashiels and Hawick and is planning to do likewise in Fort William, Thurso, Wick and Alness in September and Dingwall, Buckie, Cumnock and Annan in October.
These visits involve Scottish Water’s community engagement teams also laying down street stencils and displaying posters, and hosting a stall in a local supermarket where the community can discuss the issue of blocked sewer pipes and how we can all change our behaviour to prevent them.
The company also gives away free products to aid behaviour change including reusable wipes, small bathroom bins and gunk pots for kitchen use to dispose of fats, oil and grease.
Garry Kirkwood, customer manager - sewer response at Scottish Water, said: “To some, the street stencils might be regarded as graffiti, but they are temporary and convey a very important message.
“The real damage is happening below the surface and it is this which we are highlighting with the stencils.
“They use environmentally friendly chalk-based paint that weathers and washes away naturally in around six weeks and, for safety reasons, they will be placed only on pavements and not roads.
“We will use them whenever our Sewer Response teams attend to clear a blockage and the towns that our Community Engagement teams attend have been selected because they all have a high number of sewer blockages for their population size.
“We hope the signage and stencils have a lasting impact wherever they are used.”
