This Christmas millions of people will be preparing a traditional roast dinner and other festive food for friends and family.
Much time and effort goes into preparing, cooking and eating a roast dinner, but there’s not many of us who like to spend much time clearing up afterwards. In a bid to make light work of the dishes, how many of us will pour leftover fat, oil or grease down the kitchen sink?
This Christmas #BinIt4Beaches and the Love Water partnership are reminding people of the problems caused by putting fats, oils and grease going down the sink instead of into the proper bin, and how easy it is to avoid them.
Pouring waste liquids down the sink may seem like the obvious way to dispose of them, but did you know that pouring leftover fat, meat juices and food scraps down the sink could be harmful to the environment? Even if you pour hot water and washing up liquid in afterwards, fats, oils and grease can quickly harden in cold pipes and when mixed with other un-flushable items such as wet wipes and sanitary products, can create a fatberg.
When fatbergs form in sewerage pipes they stop waste water reaching treatment works as intended. This means the risk of sewage spilling out into homes, streets, rivers and seas is substantially increased.
Last Christmas, people in the UK consumed around 10 million turkeys. Its's estimated that for every 1 million turkeys cooked, around 250 tonnes of fats and oils could find their way into drains.
Avoiding a festive fatberg this Christmas is really simple and need not take up much time with these easy steps:
- Scrape or pour leftover fat from roasting trays and pans into a heat resistant container then it can be reused and scrape it out and bin it once cooled
- Wipe out grease left in pans with kitchen roll before washing
- Use a sink strainer to catch any greasy food scraps
Spread good cheer for the environment this Christmas and spend a few minutes longer cleaning the dishes to give the gift of clean rivers and seas for 2020 and beyond.
And what better way to walk off the Christmas dinner than taking a stroll along your local beach.
This year 98.3 per cent of designated bathing waters in England met the minimum bathing water quality standard. Of these, 71.4 per cent met the highest classification of Excellent, that's 300 bathing waters. This is thanks to the continued effort of many.
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