Preventing blockages through Keep It Clear

What have we done?

 

Our award-winning Keep It Clear customer engagement programme continues to be an important tool in our fight against pollutions. We delivered a cohesive regional campaign in 2022, raising awareness of what is appropriate to flush and go down drains.

 

In 2022 we expanded our efforts to include Food Service Establishments (FSEs), where we help organisations understand whether they have appropriate grease management in place to prevent fats, oils and greases (FOG) entering our sewers. We have launched a hotspot campaign in line with our Keep It Clear initiative and referrals from our field team who encounter blockages within a certain proximity to FSEs. We supplemented this with information on our websites that FSEs can easily access for guidance.

 

In our communities, we continued with our social, digital and radio campaign, reaching millions of customers, alongside our planned preventative maintenance programme. Our hotspot programme targeted six areas with a high blockage risk, where we rolled out planned preventative maintenance. Throughout, we engaged with our communities and our teams on the ground supported customers with helpful information. Our yearly ‘Unblocktober’ campaign raised awareness of the problems caused by blockages with the wider population.

We’ve leveraged our partnerships by working with charities and local organisations to help spread the word. They’ve helped to communicate behaviour change messages using their existing community networks, allowing us to reach specific target audiences which in turn has had a bigger impact on reducing blockages. Our toolkits, which support our customers to create more sustainable habits are also promoted by our partners. This is part of our wider strategy to educate, build intent and drive actual behaviour change.

What have we learned?

 

FSE inspections and engagement have been essential to changing behaviours. During 2022, we carried out 8,928 inspections and found that approximately 66% of FSEs are compliant with our grease management standards. Continued engagement with these establishments is essential to ensuring the correct action continues. A staggering 864 tonnes of FOG has been removed from our sewers in 2022 through this process, helping to prevent thousands of blockages and damage to the environment. 

 

With our household customers, figures from our campaign demonstrate the success of hyper-local targeting. Our campaign data shows us where to focus our efforts in the future: radio was a very successful tool, reaching over 2.5 million people during the campaign period, and website hits and social interactions reached over 1 million. The use of data to track and manage blockage reporting has enabled us to increase the level of targeting too. 

 

What have we got planned?

 

We will build on the success of our FSE programme over the next two years. We will also extend our campaign to target repeat domestic household offenders reporting FOG blockages. 

 

Working alongside ECAS (Environmental Compliance and Services), we are working towards face-to-face interactions in residential areas highlighted as high-density blockage locations. Twelve new direct customer engagement team members will be employed by ECAS and deployed in year four of the AMP. By understanding the physical blockers for behaviour change, like the challenge around the recycling of fats, oils and grease, we’re exploring partnerships with local authorities to increase rates of waste collection and aim to reduce the amount of FOG that ends up in our network. This innovative partnership process could also add to the circular economy by providing a resource for those businesses looking to recycle FOG into a renewable energy source.

 

We will also work with ECAS to launch a hyperlocal approach using our monitor and jetting installation programme as a platform to educate customers on the work we’ve carried out and the future action they can take. We’re embedding our work with ECAS across water recycling, working with our maintenance, treatment, trade effluent and infrastructure teams to identify further opportunities to spread our message on FOG and unflushables. Our domestic programme will adapt to the challenges we face from pollutions and flooding to blockages. We will continue to effectively spread our message in the hot spot areas we identify whilst supporting the monitor and jetting installation programme and targeting reactive customers.