They’re big, they’re ugly and they’re difficult to get rid of.

Next time you reach for the plunger to attack a blockage in your sink and think you’re having a tough time of it, spare a thought for the poor souls that have to deal with the huge putrid masses of non-biodegradable solid matter and congealed grease or cooking fat that have become regular features in our sewers. Yes, I’m talking here about – fatbergs.

And when I say big, I mean BIG. In 2017, a monster fatberg 250 metres (820 feet) long and weighing in at 130 tonnes was discovered in a sewer in Whitechapel. It took nine weeks and more than £1m to clear it. But if you think that this is only a problem for big cities you’d be wrong. Sewer workers in the south coast town of Sidmouth, not far from where I live, found a fatberg in December 2018 that was 64 metres (210ft) long. It took nearly two months to clear it in very hazardous conditions, involving toxic gasses that warranted the wearing of full breathing apparatus. It was the biggest fatberg that South West Water had ever come across in their service’s history.

Every year the UK spends about £100m clearing an estimated 300,000 fatbergs caused by the things that we pour down our sinks and flush down our loos that we shouldn’t. Interestingly, the problem of fatbergs is a relatively recent phenomenon and started in the 2010’s and isn’t just to do with our aging Victorian sewer system. In fact the name ‘fatberg’ is very misleading, because what they should really be called is – ‘wipebergs’.

Earlier this year, the BBC three-part series War on Plastic presented by Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall and Anita Rani revealed a fact about wipes that came as a huge shock to many and that is that they are principally made of plastic, a fact that the manufacturers have failed to make known to consumers for years. Because of this, a wipe doesn’t break down, but stays intact combining with fats and grease. And since we, in the UK, are the biggest users of wipes in the world it all adds up to a huge and expensive problem for our water companies.

There have been many campaigns to encourage us to flush only the three P’s down our loos – pee, poo and paper! However, it’s obvious that the message isn’t getting through. A welcome initiative from Water UK means that wipes that have passed its testing will get a “Fine to flush” logo. If people switched to using these flushable wipes, then production of ‘plastic’ wipes would soon come to an end – and not before time. Of course, we could all stop using wipes altogether. I’ve always found that a piece of kitchen towel and some water does the job just as well.