EDITOR’S COMMENT
To flush or not to flush
ducation! Education! Education!’ went the mantra from a different political era. Clearly one that the water industry has seen fit to adopt as it urges customers to ‘bag-it-and-bin-it’ and ‘stop-the- block.’
E
Delegates to WWT’s Wastewater Infrastructure & Networks Conference in Birmingham last month were introduced to Northumbrian Water’s kid-friendly character - Dwaine the Pipe – who gets poorly when fed the wrong stuff – namely a diet of cotton buds and wet wipes. Welsh Water’s director of wastewater services, Steve Wilson explained how the company had engaged young women and mothers by combining education on sewer abuse with social media to offer beauty treatments delivered by college students. Thames has employed its Singing Sewermen and a ‘Can’t Flush That’ rap to (slightly-less-than) tuneful effect, Severn Trent has its Grease Lightning campaign (see News, page 6) and trailblazer Anglian Water showed the way back in 2009 with its Green Ladle Awards to local businesses exhibiting good FOG (fats oils and grease) behaviour. What a field-day for PR and marketing departments and an easy win for water and sewerage companies – just the kind of icky stories that titillate regional newspapers, radio and TV.
I am a long-time advocate of an educational/PR route to manage sewer blockages (alongside technical solutions for those already hit) and I am delighted that such creativity is being let loose on such an important, costly, but invisible issue. But what is still surprising is the failure of the industry to organise a national campaign to deliver these messages. Speakers at the conference are probably right in saying that targeted and localised approaches work well, but exactly how many individual ideas are actually needed? And can we be certain that it is not our SIM- sensitive industry causing a different kind of blockage – the sharing of customer service initiatives and intellectual property. As one delegate asked, how long is it realistic to expect the message to last with short-term localised campaigns?
Northumbrian’s asset strategy manager, Calum Goodchild, also revealed how one bra in the network caused sewer flooding to 20 houses (prompting the enviable headline ‘Storm in a D-cup’ in the local paper). Given the mobility of the population through national and international migration for work, dispersed families, as well as holiday trips – who is to know where that offending bra might turn up, or whether its former owner had been ‘targeted’.
The only way to ensure the kind of culture shift that will deliver ‘best practice’ in customer behaviour (and healthier sewers) is for the water companies to use their combined might to send out a clear, consistent and creative message nationally. This should be combined with use of WRc/UK Water Industry Research’s Flushability Protocol to put pressure on companies manufacturing non-flushables to build customer education into their PR – or carry the can for resulting pollution. The industry should get right behind the work already being done by WRc with the ‘non- woven products’ manufacturer associations. nnn
Natasha Wiseman, editor Follow me on Twitter @wiseonwater Have your say, comment on the editor’s blog at
WWTonline.co.uk wwtonline.co.uk August 2013 Water & Wastewater Treatment W&
WT_half_Leixlip_270x88_v1.indd 1 3 21/02/2012 10:48
Driving down energy without pumping up costs.
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To find out how, watch the video:
www.abb.co.uk/energy
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