Fatberg clogging London sewers

they're geared up for battle and waging war under the streets of London taking on a monster that feeds on grease and garbage a giant called fatberg it's a curious sight from street level but there's much more to see down below and for that we've got a suit up there we go London's hundred and fifty year old sewers weren't built for comfort it's a tight squeeze at first but a cinch for field operations manager natalie stern so it's more difficult to gain access to sirs and it's hard to stand the work environment - there's the risk of dangerous gases not to mention all that slop and the visitors on the wall so the stench isn't as bad as you might imagine the trick is not to fall in because all that stuff is about as deep as my chess yuck the real monster is down that dark tunnel the fatberg this one 26 tons of solidified fat grease wet wipes condoms diapers and whatever else wasn't meant to go down the drain in East London crews spent nine weeks tackling the biggest rock-solid blob they've ever seen a hundred and thirty tons of fatberg so big it clogged the sewer and damaged the walls it's the result of 19th century infrastructure meeting 21st century problems that's how waste network manager Alex Saunders sees it the Victorians built a really good sewer net Network force that we continue to maintain but the pressures of modern living with our fatty diets that a Coy's combined with using things like wet wipes that's what causes the really big problem so crews have been sucking out the fatberg and trucking it away some of it ends up here a four-hour drive from London the world's first plant converting fat bird into biofuel we got a tour from argent Energy's Corporate Affairs Director dick and paws new tanker that comes in with say 20 tons in it and we convert all that into biodiesel we get the oil out of it and the oil turned into by diesel is about 20 tons of carbon savings oh that's gotta make you feel good first the fatberg is filtered to remove the biggest solids the whole process will leave less than 40 percent of the original material what's left over ends up in the landfill while the fat oil and grease is heated then filtered again and again this is one of the final steps in the filtration process this machine uses fine particles of wood chips to filter out the little pieces of waste that are left from the source material and what goes on from here is essentially oil that then goes on to be transformed into biofuel the process can take a week by the end of it what's left of the fatberg looks like this clear biofuel that's mixed with traditional diesel pumped back into a truck and again taken away some ends up back in London powering those double-decker buses while the battle underground continues Thomas dag whose CBC News London Canadian Municipalities spend an estimated 250 million dollars a year to bust up fatbergs and clear away other unflushable 'he's so they're trying to change behavior Halifax made a video on how to bacon responsibly if you do have a lot of extra bacon fat on your hands well you can use it for example bacon aims to keep grease out of the sewers last month vancouver recruited some star power to launch wipe it green bennett and you know they just dump it down the drain and it's like why london ontario asks people to collect cooking grease and cup supplied by the city they can be thrown in the garbage or dropped off at Depot's to be turned into alternative fuel

Channel: CBC News: The National

Views: 44,225

Keywords: fatbergs, grease, garbage, congealed, London sewers, biofuel, Thomas Daigle, National, CBC

Id: PsafPhReTEo

Length: 4min 38sec (278 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2017