What Are Our Friends Up To? Part 3: Surfers Against Sewage (SAS)

Did you really think that our friends at SAS would hibernate away and wait for finer weather to arrive? Not a bit of it! Any self respecting surfer will tell you that some of the best surfing is to be found out of season when weather conditions can be volatile, and the same applies to their 365 day a year campaign message.

Trapped in their campaigning headlights over the festive period was the seasonal problem of FOGS (fats,oils and greases), residues of roast dinners that become increasingly prevalent during the Christmas period, but in truth tend to be an all year round problem, particularly in coastal areas with a proportionately higher number of eating and hotel establishments.

Making a formidable team with Environmental Agency, SAS have started the FOGS campaign to draw attention to this problem, which is exacerbated by the “out of sight, out of mind” attitude that we all have to the smelly question of drainage.

When FOGs are poured down sinks or drains, they quickly cool and congeal on sewer walls, restricting the amount of sewage the system can process resulting in raw sewage overflows into rivers, the sea or, even worse, into our homes.

The UK Water industry estimates there are 150,000 sewer blockages caused by FOGs being poured down the sink.These blockages can result in sewage discharges from combined sewer overflows (CSOs) at many popular beaches across Cornwall.

The new FOGs campaign, Protect Your Beaches, Stop Pouring Fats, Oils and Greases was launched to business communities in Seaton and East Looe in Cornwall, which are both failing basic European water quality standards in part due to fats, oils and greases in the system. In early December SAS distributed FOGs posters, leaflets & stickers packed full of handy hints and top tips to help businesses manage their kitchen, protect local beaches and improve water quality at over 150 local businesses.

SAS Campaign Director Andy Cummins says:“Seaton and East Looe are the first communities in the UK to benefit from this new campaign. Surfers Against Sewage hope to promote Seaton & East Looe as outstanding national examples of community action delivering positive changes to protect our precious oceans and beaches.”

Environment Agency, Environmental Monitor Leader, Claudine Foniter says: “We are providing the communities at Seaton and East Looe the opportunity to help improve water quality at local beaches. We hope that the community and businesses will all help play their part in delivering these improvements through SAS’s FOGS campaign.”

Keep an eye on how the FOGS campaign is going on:

http://www.sas.org.uk/news/2012/12/19/protect-our-beaches-dont-pour-fats-oils-and-grease-down-the-sink

While general SAS stuff can be viewed on:

http://www.sas.org.uk/latest-news