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CostaBlancaPeople 12th - 18th April 2022
12th - 18th april - edition 936
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Half a million euro per year to clear wipes from local sewerage network
torrevieja city council and water management company agamed have launched a new awareness campaign about the proper disposal of wet wipes and other waste after it emerged that the town spends as much as half a million euro per year on the issue.
the town hall revealed this week that flushing ‘wet wipes’ down the toilet has a knock on effect of a 15% increase in the cost of maintaining sewerage and sanitation networks and infrastructures, which represents an additional cost of around €500,000 per year.
the councillor responsible for the integral Water Cycle of the torrevieja City Council, antonio Vidal, together with the deputy manager of agamed, Gemma Cruz, and the head of sewerage management, dina González, presented the new awareness campaign called “the monster of the wipes”, about the importance of correct practices and the proper use of bathroom wipes and other solid waste such as masks, gloves, cotton swabs, cigarette butts, etc. that can wreak havoc on the operation of wastewater treatment plants. every year, tons of solid waste end up in sewage networks and in treatment plants. part of this waste that citizens throw down the toilet is not biodegradable and generates obstructions. this problem has been made worse in recent years by the massive presence of masks and gloves. in the last year alone, the treatment plant that collects wastewater from
torrevieja collected a total of 256 tons of waste, much of which corresponds to these non biodegradable items. as a direct result of these obstructions, agamed had to deal with around 260 incidents in the pumping and in the sewerage network during the last year alone – that’s almost one incident every day and a half. the campaign aims to use media and social networks to highlight the issue. in the case of wipes, for children’s use, make-up removers or for hygiene and body care, the problem is the presence of skeins of textile fibres and plastics, which, together with many other residues flushed down the toilet, clog the sewers. although many of these products claim that they are biodegradable, they are not really easily disintegrated, since the time they take to degrade is considerably long. the facilities most damaged by wipes are the sewage pumping stations,
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which require constant cleaning, with the consequent nuisance of odours and noise that this causes to the residents of the area where the pumps are located. also damaged are the gratings and sieves of the treatment plants, which collapse and break due to the accumulation of wipes. in addition to wipes, the population throws other products down the toilet that cause serious problems in the purification processes and affect the environment, such as paints, oils, detergents, soaps, medicines and pesticides.