Don’t do the dirty with your turkey, families advised

Families are being reminded that their Christmas turkey could come back to haunt them this year.
 
Households across Greater Manchester will pour around a quarter of a million pints of turkey fat down their drains over the festive season - leading to winter gungyland of blocked pipes and big bills.
 
Mike Wood, United Utilities' regional wastewater network manager said: "Fat and grease cause more than half the sewer blockages we deal with every year. At Christmas, the volume of cooking fat entering the sewers goes up dramatically - which can spell big headaches for our engineers, and for households.
 
"When the fat cools, it hardens, clogging pipes and causing wastewater to spill out into streets, streams, rivers and even homes and gardens. And it's not just our sewer pipes that suffer. Household pipes can get blocked too, resulting in hefty bills.    
 
"We're advising all our customers to collect the fat and oil from the Christmas dinner into a container, and once cooled, scrape it out into the bin. It's the surest way to avoid a messy and expensive festive season."

The company expects to tackle at least 40,000 sewer blockages in 2012. According to the Consumer Council for Water, three quarters of all sewer blockages - and half of all cases of sewer flooding - are caused by people putting items they shouldn't down the loo or the sink.