Rag - flushable doesn’t mean bio-degradable.

Flushing things like wipes, nappies, sanitary towels or cotton buds etc down the toilet can cause drains and sewers to block. If they get through the sewer system they need to be screened out at the point where sewage enters the local Waste Water Treatment Works. This non bio-degradable material is known as “rag” - and it needs to be taken away in skips to landfill. The message is to “bag it and bin it.”

This is “Scotland’s Annual Climate Week” a Scottish Government initiative which aims to stimulate thinking, ambition and innovation around climate change and what we can do to fight it. It’s all the more high profile since the Scottish Parliament's Climate Change Committee declared a climate emergency in June 2019, (a net-zero emissions target etc for 2045). Our Local Council have a series of educational and participative events on each day of #ScotsClimateWeek - today was "Water Day" - so, we took the opportunity to visit a local Waste Water Treatment Works operated by Scottish Water. A few folks didn’t turned up, shame - they missed a really interesting visit, where the staff were generous with their time and information. It was evident Scottish Water are aware of, and working hard at complying with, their environmental obligations, and there was good chat re what climate change means in practice, and how they’re adapting to it. It was good to see they were generating solar power on site and using recycled biogas in their processes. We discussed a byproduct made from sewage sludge - a soil structure improver/fertiliser used in agriculture - to some this is a controversial byproduct.