Thames Water engineers recently removed a giant 250 metre long fatberg ten times bigger than the famous Kingston monster found in 2013. The Whitechapel fatberg, one of the largest ever found, was blocking a stretch of Victorian sewer. Here, Thames Water media relations manager Stuart White explains the extent of the problem and how the company coped with the worldwide media interest that it created.

How was the fatberg discovered and how large was it?

The Whitechapel fatberg in east London is one of the biggest ever found. It was a rock solid mass of wet wipes, nappies, fat and oil weighing a whopping 130 tonnes – the same as eleven double decker buses. It was blocking a stretch of Victorian sewer more than twice the length of two Wembley football pitches.

It’s become a global celebrity and a great example to promote the problems Thames Water and other water companies are facing from sewer abuse. It has captured imaginations, shocked and disgusted, and got people all over the world talking about what happens next to their waste.

What was it made up of?

It was a congealed lump of fat, oil and grease, mixed with all the usual unflushables, wet wipes, condoms, nappies, cotton buds, underwear. There is something repulsively human about this modern-day monster we help create. It’s there lurking, congealing and growing fast under our feet.

Why did it grow so huge?

We have a major problem with fatbergs, both in sewer networks and at our sewage treatment works. We check our sewers routinely but these things can build up really quickly and cause flooding, as the pipe plugs shut and the waste gets blocked. Once the sewer clogs, the perfect combination of wet wipes, sanitary products and fat, oil and grease quickly builds up behind. There’s your fatberg.

How have you set about removing it?

It was a total monster and took a lot of manpower and machinery to get out. We were using high-powered jet hoses to break up the mass before sucking it out with tankers at first, but damage it caused to the sewer meant we also had to do a lot of the work by hand, using shovels. The sewer is just over 1200mm high and 700mm wide, and nearly four metres below the road. It’s very challenging conditions for the team clearing it and I fully respect the work they do down there. It is cramped, hot and the smell can be completely overpowering.

What happens next to it?

It may have been a monster, our worst enemy, but we all agreed the Whitechapel fatberg deserved a second chance. We, therefore, teamed up with a leading waste to power firm to transform what was once an evil, gut-wrenching, rancid blob into 10,000 litres of pure green fuel.

It’s the perfect solution for the environment and our customers and helps towards our target to self-generate 33 per cent of the electricity we use by 2020 – last year we produced enough electricity to power more than 86,000 homes.

Therefore, you will please to know, the Whitechapel fatberg will get a new lease of life as renewable, biodegradable fuel powering an engine instead of causing the misery of sewer flooding.

Tell us about your campaign surrounding the problem?

Often people don’t realise the consequences of putting things other than human waste and toilet paper down their toilets and drains. Having sewage flood your property or business as a result of a blockage is hugely distressing and, in many cases, avoidable.

The ‘Bin it – don’t block it’ campaign is designed to help our 15 million customers understand that the sewers are not an abyss for household rubbish.

The concerning reality, however, is that eight times every hour a Thames Water customer suffers a blockage caused by items being flushed away or put down the drain which shouldn’t be. There is obviously a huge cost involved in this, too, and we spend about £1m a month clearing blockages from our 68,000 mile sewer network.

Check out our web pages and new videos on the campaign, including the ‘myth of the flushable wipe’ for more information: www.thameswater.co.uk/binit.

How have you handled the global media interest in the story?

The story was ‘most read’ on the BBC News website on the day (September 12) we released it and still in the world news five weeks later. It has reached more than one billion people from more than 115 countries. It was the top worldwide Twitter Entertainment Moments story following the Greg James Radio 1 Show from the fatberg at the beginning of October, and was on page three of the New York Times.

We kept the story moving with new angles to keep up with the interest throughout, including how it’s being converted into biodiesel and our work with food establishments to prevent fat getting into the sewer in the first place.

We’ve answered so many questions, sent so much information and done so many interviews, including with the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, plus American and Canadian media, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden. The list goes on and on, and the coverage has been phenomenal. We’re a small team of four so it was a total whirlwind month, but a fantastic and rewarding experience. We had set the press office up as a Newsroom at the start of the year, introduced video and a far more proactive approach to telling our story, and all our hard work has paid off – I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved.

The real hope and expectation now, of course, is that all the noise in the media will lead to a change in consumer behaviour, and a sharp reduction in blockages. Most people should now know wet wipes go in the bin.

And where did the word fatberg come from?

Everybody is talking about fatbergs – the word was even used recently on Have I Got News For You, The Chase and Mock The Week. Fatberg is actually a word invented by Thames Water, and it has really caught on. It is known around the world and is in the dictionary – Donald Trump was even called one at the Labour Party conference by a famous author. We’ve created a monster, something to fear, something to talk about, and it has really brought the problem to life. Please remember, don’t feed the fatberg.