Latest / Privycast / Ep. 63 Fatbergs
Transcript
- 0:00>> Speaker A: I mean, if you try and clean up a mess with a piece of
- 0:03toilet paper, heck, you watch these,
- 0:06like, braun and Downey and all these other,
- 0:09like, I don't even think I named a
- 0:11real paper towel brand. But you watch these
- 0:14paper towel companies make these ads, and the
- 0:17dude just so, like, laxadaisically traipses the
- 0:20paper towel through this big
- 0:23splash of, uh, it's always blue juice, by the
- 0:25way.
- 0:30Welcome back to privy.
- 0:33Privy is a podcast
- 0:35about bathrooms recorded
- 0:38from my home bathroom. I am your
- 0:41host, hunter Hoover. And, man,
- 0:45I love bathrooms, and I really like
- 0:47bathrooms today because we were out
- 0:50on me, uh, and my homie were out on a little
- 0:52outing, and, um,
- 0:55yeah, we were in a new
- 0:58place, and so it wasn't the most
- 1:01obvious, uh, where the
- 1:04bathroom was going to be. And so there was a
- 1:06learning moment where we had to go. How
- 1:10worried are you to go to the bathroom in public? I
- 1:12obviously shared that I have no
- 1:15reservations when it comes to, uh,
- 1:18performing scoot out of my
- 1:21own home. Um, but, you know, sometimes
- 1:23a person finds themselves
- 1:27and any person in this world finds
- 1:30themselves out on what I like
- 1:32to call a strenuous walk
- 1:35that trends uphill in the
- 1:38wilderness. And you never
- 1:40know. Uh, moments
- 1:43before jumping on this record, I
- 1:46polished off a quarter pounder with
- 1:48cheese. Uh, so that'll come
- 1:51back for a fun privy visit later. But,
- 1:54uh, sometimes you just polish off what might
- 1:57be just, like, a little bit of a randy
- 1:59cheeseburger, and then you have
- 2:03a mega time emergency in a porta
- 2:06potty, and it's real bad.
- 2:09Uh, like, right in the middle of your strenuous,
- 2:12uphill outdoor walk.
- 2:15Apparently, that's a thing that some people have
- 2:17experienced. Uh, I can't imagine
- 2:20trying to do a day uphill,
- 2:23strenuous outdoor walk with
- 2:26diarrhea. I can't imagine doing that.
- 2:28And I've already shared on the show that I. Hey,
- 2:31also, uh, if you're joining us, for the first time,
- 2:34I'm going to talk about bathroom
- 2:37stuff. But, yeah,
- 2:40you have to hit that porta potty more than a few times. Sometimes
- 2:43you don't leave it for a long time. Um, but at
- 2:46least everything in this
- 2:48scenario was completely hypothetical.
- 2:51You know what I'm saying? It's all good because
- 2:54it's not real. This week on
- 2:57privy, we're moving away from
- 3:00going J when you're at play
- 3:03to talking once again about the great
- 3:06innovation that is sewers.
- 3:09And before
- 3:12we have to take the most
- 3:14sideways,
- 3:17backwards route into talking about these
- 3:20things sometimes. Otherwise, you might as well just go google
- 3:22it. Uh, what if I told
- 3:25you right now,
- 3:28as I'm yapping into this
- 3:30microphone in my bathroom and as you're listening to it in your ear
- 3:33holes, that there was a
- 3:35monster lurking in our
- 3:38sewers, multiple of
- 3:40them. And what if I told
- 3:43you that these monsters
- 3:46were best friends, nay,
- 3:48verily, cousins, nay,
- 3:50verily, best friends
- 3:53of soap, and we're going to
- 3:56talk about these monsters that are wreaking
- 3:59havoc. But I got to give you a brief
- 4:01recap on sewers, because at
- 4:04one point, things were incredibly
- 4:07stinky and incredibly dirty
- 4:09and incredibly full of bacterial buddies.
- 4:13And if that sounds a lot like every
- 4:15middle and early high school
- 4:18locker room experience, you're not wrong.
- 4:21But as time went on, so
- 4:24things got stinky enough.
- 4:28Back in the day when you took a dumperooni,
- 4:31some cultures had bathrooms, and we're going to talk a little bit
- 4:34about that next episode, but a lot of
- 4:37them didn't, especially when you get into the middle
- 4:39ages, where they just
- 4:42dumped their skeet right in the streets.
- 4:45They'd poop in a chamber pot or pee in a chamber pot, and they'd just
- 4:48dump it out right in the street with the thought being that water
- 4:51and rainfall would wash this away.
- 4:54Incredibly brown, incredibly stinky.
- 4:58What a time to have been alive. But at
- 5:01one point, things were so stinky and dirty and
- 5:04full of bacteria that enough people got
- 5:07sick. Like, not got tired of it, but
- 5:10they actually got sick. Um,
- 5:12and they started to do some
- 5:15very entry level bill Nye the
- 5:18science dude stuff to figure out if
- 5:21I drink water that has poop in
- 5:23it, it kind of makes me dummy sick.
- 5:27And I know that we hear that and we go,
- 5:30uh, are we for real right now? But, yeah,
- 5:34that was, like, news to them that something about what
- 5:36was in your poopy, remember, the whole
- 5:39bacterial, viral, whatever
- 5:42theory of germ theory, there it is.
- 5:45Wasn't really on the scene at this point. And
- 5:48so it was just like, well, if I drink the water
- 5:51that's been next to Tony's skeet,
- 5:54I'm more likely to get sick. And
- 5:57they figured out that the stuff that was making
- 6:00everyone so sick,
- 6:05it was causing cholera. Uh,
- 6:09the short and sweet of this is, once it was
- 6:11discovered that the poop from
- 6:14people was making other people sick,
- 6:17laws and sanitation standards
- 6:20began to be put in place. And we talked about that a little
- 6:23bit in our sewer episode, but many
- 6:26of the systems switched from, like, cess
- 6:29pits, which allowed the byproduct
- 6:32of human activity to seep into the
- 6:34drinking supply. Uh, and thus,
- 6:37infecting the drinking
- 6:39water, um, the well water. And
- 6:42they switched from these cesspits to these septic
- 6:45tanks. Now, I'll put a
- 6:48picture out on the privy, social stuff for you to see,
- 6:51just a graphic of this, like, how it was playing.
- 6:54It's kind of wild to see how the cesspits polluted the
- 6:57drinking water. It's kind of awful. But
- 7:00this also, because all these
- 7:02sanitation and other,
- 7:04uh, necessary changes were being
- 7:07made, it also
- 7:10gave rise to complete
- 7:12reconstruction of city sewer
- 7:15systems. These were often closed
- 7:17systems, which relied on the flow of water to
- 7:20remove waste as well as break down some of the waste
- 7:23products that would get caught in the mix. Um,
- 7:26getting caught in the mix is the technical term for being in a
- 7:29sewer, by the way. Um, at this time, it
- 7:31was mostly agreed that the wastewater would
- 7:34be pumped into bigger bodies of water, and then
- 7:37drastically, this helped the cholera problem. So,
- 7:40in other words, you do brown and it goes
- 7:43into the septic system or into the
- 7:46sewer line that is attached to the city, and that
- 7:49is flushed via you dumping water down your
- 7:51toilet, or if you're lucky enough to have a flush
- 7:54toilet, um, it is flushed down and pushed
- 7:57out, and later it is spilled into larger
- 8:00bodies, usually of natural
- 8:02water. Now, obviously,
- 8:05we now can look back and say, well, this might not be the
- 8:08best solution, um, but it is a solution to the
- 8:11contaminated drinking water problem.
- 8:15But, however, if you live downstream,
- 8:22you have to take on the problems of the folks upstream,
- 8:25because if they skeet and they rinse
- 8:28it out into the river, that's coming to
- 8:31visit you here pretty quick. So
- 8:34strap in, friend. Uh, yeah,
- 8:37they eventually had to like,
- 8:39history of sewer. We talked about that, but things with
- 8:42filtration made things better. And over time, they had to
- 8:45move things farther and farther away from society
- 8:48to make room for the filtration systems, as well
- 8:51as to keep it away from the drinking
- 8:54supply of most people. Uh, and there's
- 8:57some maps of the sewers of cities that you can
- 8:59find. Um, they're fascinating to look at. I'll try to share a
- 9:02few of those as well. But this week, we're not just
- 9:05talking about sewers for sewer's sake.
- 9:08I know how much y'all love talking about
- 9:11sewers, but we are going to marry
- 9:14friggin wed. Flipping
- 9:17unite that idea.
- 9:20Sewers with another aspect
- 9:23and facet of human life.
- 9:26For the longest time after the advent of toilet
- 9:29paper in 1857. Mark your calendars.
- 9:331492, Columbus sailed the ocean
- 9:36blue, and in 1857, toilet paper was
- 9:39invented. That's what you need to know. About it. But
- 9:41shortly after the onset of the sewer system,
- 9:44people would regularly throw their
- 9:47toilet paper, their spent paper, in a
- 9:49waste paper basket, hence the name, instead
- 9:52of flushing it down the toilet. Now,
- 9:55this was mostly because flushed
- 9:58the paper would go into a collection tank where the
- 10:01materials would be broken down and reabsorbed into the
- 10:04water supply. Also, if you're operating on a septic
- 10:07system tank, this paper back then could
- 10:10be incredibly hard on those tanks and cause
- 10:13them to fill up much faster. We don't
- 10:15need to rehash the history of toilet paper,
- 10:19but what we do need to do is we need to
- 10:22know that the toilet paper and other paper
- 10:25products found, I don't know, like, in
- 10:27feminine hygiene materials and elsewhere,
- 10:31they don't really break down in the ways
- 10:34that you think they would. If
- 10:37you try and clean up a mess with a piece of toilet paper.
- 10:40Heck, you watch these
- 10:42braun and Downey and all these other,
- 10:45like, I don't even think I named a
- 10:47real paper towel brand. But you watch these
- 10:50paper towel companies make these ads, and the
- 10:53dude just so, like, laxadaisically traipses the
- 10:56paper towel through this big
- 10:58splash of. It's always blue juice, by the
- 11:01way, what's going on in their kitchen that they drink
- 11:04it so much? Blue juice? How
- 11:07ironic would it be if it was just Windex? You know what I'm saying?
- 11:09But you take the paper towel through it, and they
- 11:12barely hold up. If you get a piece of toilet paper up
- 11:15on that mix, it turns to nothing. It
- 11:18becomes, literally particles
- 11:21in the air. Toilet paper is just like. It's like trying
- 11:24to sand a board with a fern.
- 11:27It just turns to nothing. And so
- 11:30hearing that it doesn't break down
- 11:32probably doesn't square as well in your brain as you might
- 11:35hope. Uh, but it's not technically
- 11:38biodegradable, which. Thank you, Sam. Shout out to
- 11:41Sam Bagenstas last week for reminding us that
- 11:44toilet paper is not technically biodegradable. And that's how
- 11:47we get little toilet paper gardens all over the place.
- 11:50We don't need to rehash all this toilet paper stuff.
- 11:53But once urban
- 11:56plumbing began to be put in place,
- 11:59people did kind of begin
- 12:02flushing the paper away with the rest of the buddies.
- 12:05Also, if you're jamming,
- 12:07sometimes I wonder your bathroom had to stink,
- 12:10because if you're wiping your bink and then sticking it in the
- 12:13trash next to you, are you just emptying that
- 12:16after every pass?
- 12:20Your dookie paper is just chilling right
- 12:23there. And I guess at the time, they were emptying things into
- 12:26the street a lot more, so they probably
- 12:28wouldn't just stank as it was.
- 12:31But I'm sure it couldn't help. Like, if you had a
- 12:34toilet in your home and you were opting to throw your paper
- 12:37in a basket with smear on
- 12:39it. I can't imagine that does a lot for the
- 12:42smell of that bathroom space. That's just
- 12:45me. But in
- 12:48time, people began to flush the
- 12:50paper, and in more time, there
- 12:53was an increase in the fat content of the
- 12:56deposits, mostly due to an increased
- 12:58production of trans fats and
- 13:01foods. Not to mention, people began to
- 13:04just not reuse the fats in food, and
- 13:07they would rinse them down the drain.
- 13:09Bombs away. Watch out, Mario,
- 13:12because here comes liquid fat down the
- 13:15drain, and those things are going down the drain, and there's a lot
- 13:18of fat and paper. And this at, uh,
- 13:21long last. Now that we are more
- 13:24than ten minutes into this brings us
- 13:27to the topic of our episode.
- 13:31And you might have heard of
- 13:33Gettysburg, and
- 13:35you might have heard of St.
- 13:38Petersburg, but I bet you ain't ever
- 13:41heard of fatbergs.
- 13:44It was a stretch. A, uh,
- 13:46Fatberg is kind of
- 13:49like an iceberg. So if you
- 13:52think of an iceberg, picture it with me, if you
- 13:55will. And if you're like me, you can't picture
- 13:58an iceberg without picturing those, like,
- 14:0270% of what's going on is under the surface
- 14:05diagrams that they show you in every
- 14:08self help and psychology and
- 14:11how to deal with people. Training thing. We
- 14:13get it. We're icebergs. Guess what? They're probably
- 14:16melting anyway, so just cool it with the iceberg
- 14:19analogies. But think of an iceberg, and
- 14:22then instead of ICE, it's
- 14:25fat. Like, not. Its
- 14:27appearance is fat. It's not like a chunky, bunky.
- 14:31It is made up of
- 14:33fat now. Yeah,
- 14:36so that's the idea.
- 14:38Fatbergs were officially named in
- 14:412008 when pieces of a fatty
- 14:44stuff began to wash up on the beaches in
- 14:47Wales, uh, England. And in
- 14:502010, they realized where they started calling these
- 14:52fat burgs, because they're like, wow, looks like chunks of
- 14:55iceberg, but it's kind of fatty and looks like
- 14:58lard. Uh, and in 2010, they
- 15:01finally put it all together where these things
- 15:04were coming from. The term
- 15:07fatberg was made an official word in
- 15:102015, which means that dough
- 15:13and Muggle were official words before
- 15:15Fatberg, but there isn't a lot
- 15:18of. And honestly, like, if
- 15:21you're picturing them, I kind of think of those, like,
- 15:23adipose creatures from Doctor who.
- 15:26Um, if you're a doctor who fanatic.
- 15:31You're probably having what I like to call a dry spell for doctor
- 15:34who, uh, references, uh,
- 15:37in your life. I know I am. Uh, so there's one for
- 15:40you. Think of, like, little adipose buddies.
- 15:43But instead of being, like, kind of floppy
- 15:46and soft, these fat
- 15:48bergs form a rock
- 15:51like solid mass of
- 15:54non biodegradable solids, such
- 15:57as wipes and toilet paper and
- 16:01condoms and solidified fat,
- 16:04oil, and grease, also known as fog. Fog.
- 16:07Fat, oil, and grease.
- 16:11Holy fog. Uh, the buildup of these
- 16:14mixes with the non biodegradable
- 16:18to form these hard, oily chunks of
- 16:20waxy rock like things
- 16:23fatbergs from here form
- 16:26where there are rough surfaces in sewer
- 16:29pipes. So maybe the flow, um,
- 16:32has caused some sort of rough, uh,
- 16:35surfaces in sewer pipes where maybe
- 16:38human sludge has become too rigorous. Or
- 16:41the flow hits rough spots and starts to
- 16:43swirl. And if you've ever seen a river, you know how, like,
- 16:46it catches on the bank and it kind of does start to do that
- 16:49swirl, and it kind of gets the weird gunk over
- 16:52there. And apparently, that's a pretty good place to
- 16:54dip your fish and hook it is some fishing this
- 16:57week. Um, but this isn't a podcast about
- 17:00fishing. It's a podcast about bathrooms. And
- 17:03it forms in this swirl. It's kind of like
- 17:05churning, if you will. It forms a buildup
- 17:08of fat and these deposits.
- 17:11And this happens a lot in
- 17:14cement and brick sewers. That's, like,
- 17:17the primary location where you'll find
- 17:20this swirl thing happen. It can
- 17:23also happen a lot, like where there's a tree
- 17:26root or something else has bust through the sewer
- 17:29line. But it isn't just fats.
- 17:32Now, do you remember
- 17:35how our soap friends from a few weeks
- 17:38ago had their start in animal fats
- 17:41and oils? Well, it
- 17:43turns out when fats sit and churn
- 17:47in these weird sewer pools, and they combine
- 17:50with all of the
- 17:53unmentionables that a person may flush or dump
- 17:56away, they go through a process,
- 17:59these fats and the things that happened
- 18:02from too many cheesy bees. Shout out to the quarter
- 18:05pounder with cheese. Royale with cheese that I had at
- 18:08the beginning of the episode. We're back. Um,
- 18:11they go through a process called
- 18:13saponification. Now,
- 18:16saponification or soapification,
- 18:19whatever. It's fancy science term. I'm not a
- 18:22scientist. It requires four
- 18:25components. Calcium, fatty
- 18:28acids,
- 18:31fogs, got them. And
- 18:34water. These mix with the non
- 18:36biodegradable materials a person would flush
- 18:39or rinse down the drain, and it can form what
- 18:42essentially feels and acts like
- 18:45concrete or like a big,
- 18:47powerful rock. A berg,
- 18:50if you will. And you know what you
- 18:53don't want in a sewer? A sewer, which,
- 18:56by the way, if we forgot, is designed to
- 18:59have free flowing and moving human
- 19:01sludge. You know what you don't want in
- 19:04there? Free standing
- 19:07rocks and concrete. That's bad.
- 19:10Zero out of ten. Get it out.
- 19:13Sewers are supposed to have
- 19:15not cement in them. Poop,
- 19:18yes. Rats, probably. Early
- 19:21adolescent. Early adolescent hybrid kung fu
- 19:23tortoises, most definitely, but
- 19:26not fat burgs. And, um,
- 19:29based on how many sewers have suffered from
- 19:32fat birds, maybe those crime fighting
- 19:34reptiles should be fighting big, ugly fat monsters who
- 19:37clogged the sewers. Like tmnt people.
- 19:40I know I just called your beloved turtles early
- 19:43adolescent hybrid kung fu tortoises. But
- 19:46consider this my Ip if you want the
- 19:49fat berg monster that the tmnt
- 19:52gentlemen have to fight. Yep,
- 19:55it's more widespread than all the rhinos I've ever
- 19:58seen in sewers recently. You know what I'm saying? Uh, in
- 20:01fact, London, New York, Denver, Valencia,
- 20:04Melbourne and countless other cities
- 20:07have all had problems with Fatburgs.
- 20:10One of the largest Fatbergs was discovered in
- 20:13Whitechapel, London. It was
- 20:16130
- 20:17tons. 130
- 20:20tons? That's too big.
- 20:23It was the size of what they equated
- 20:25to eleven double decker
- 20:28buses. And at the worst spot,
- 20:31it blocked 90% of the
- 20:34sewer. That's not good.
- 20:36That's incredibly bad. You don't want that
- 20:39situation. They believe it got so
- 20:42big because of the structure of the victorian
- 20:45sewers, as well as how long
- 20:48it just has been in existence.
- 20:50Other fatbergs, including one weighing
- 20:5315 tons, which was the size of a bus, was
- 20:56discovered in 2013. In September
- 20:592014, they found one the size of an
- 21:02airliner that had to be cleared by a sanitation
- 21:05team in London, and another, smaller one in
- 21:07Australia, was found later that year.
- 21:10Fatbergs have become so
- 21:12prominent now that cities and
- 21:15states have begun to budget for their
- 21:18removal. Millions and millions of
- 21:20dollars. Another way they have
- 21:23seen fit to fight the scourge of fat
- 21:26burgs is by just teaching people
- 21:29education. Quit flushing your freaking
- 21:32paper towels. Don't flush
- 21:34your feminine hygiene products. Stop
- 21:37it. Most toilet
- 21:40paper nowadays is generally safe to be
- 21:43flushed, but stop flushing the other stuff,
- 21:45like, don't do it. They also
- 21:48say, don't go dumping all your fatty
- 21:51deposits down the drain, or, lord
- 21:54forbid, down the toilet. And
- 21:57this brings me to a
- 22:00segment of hunter's
- 22:02anecdotes to keep you
- 22:05afloat.
- 22:13This hunter's anecdotes is, uh,
- 22:16about the time that I didn't know how to
- 22:19dispose of a lot of grease. Um, so
- 22:22when I was in high school, there was a period of time
- 22:25where I would cook dinner
- 22:28for my parents, uh, and myself, uh, and
- 22:30I would start the dinner so that way it would be done as my parents got home,
- 22:33because they were getting home late. And at
- 22:36one point in this venture, I, um, think
- 22:39I had made tacos or hamburglar
- 22:42helper, that lovely little oven mitt.
- 22:45And I do as you do. You get the
- 22:47box out. And, um, I'm still at the stage where there's not a lot of
- 22:50experimenting. There is following directions as if
- 22:53your life depended on it cooking. But, yeah, it was some
- 22:56sort of beef product. That's all I remember. But I
- 22:59remember that either we hadn't boughtten
- 23:02some particularly fatty meat or something,
- 23:05because I'm, like, browning
- 23:08this meat, and there is an ungodly amount
- 23:11of fat and oil left over. And I
- 23:14think I remember even calling my mom and going,
- 23:17hey, I'm browning this beef.
- 23:19Which, by the way, great euphemism for what
- 23:22goes on in the bathroom. But I'm browning
- 23:25this beef, and it's looking real
- 23:28greasy. Like there is a
- 23:31puddle of collected grease. Either she didn't answer,
- 23:34or she gave me real adult good advice.
- 23:37Either way, I know I didn't take it, because
- 23:40I think it was like, well, you have to collect it with a paper
- 23:43towel and dispose
- 23:46of it in the trash or something like that. I don't know.
- 23:49All I was thinking was, that's a lot of work. So what I
- 23:52did was I scooped all of the burger out, and
- 23:55I took this pan full
- 23:58of just still hot burger
- 24:00grease, and I took it into everybody's
- 24:03favorite room, the bathroom. And I dumped that
- 24:06joker straight in the toilet and flushed. And I think I
- 24:09had to flush, like, twice because there was enough to
- 24:12where the first flush finished while I was still
- 24:15pouring. Um, and, yeah, I just
- 24:18deposited probably
- 24:214oz or more of just straight
- 24:24burger fat straight down my toilet in
- 24:27my house growing up. So, um,
- 24:29shout out, mom and dad. Uh, I don't think
- 24:32anything ever was clogged, but I
- 24:35defo did this. And I remember doing it because I
- 24:38remember being like, why don't we just dump everything down the
- 24:40toilet? You don't have to really
- 24:43clean it up. And it definitely sees much worse
- 24:46things. And now I know the answer is because of
- 24:49fatbergs. So, thanks, fat burgs,
- 24:52and thanks for. Sorry
- 24:55for what I did to you. This has been
- 24:57another hunter's anecdotes to keep you afloat.
- 25:03You know, when we're young, we just don't know.
- 25:06That's what we've learned today. Um,
- 25:10quit flushing freaking paper towels and other stuff.
- 25:12Like some countries have. Have
- 25:15started putting a flushable
- 25:17categorization on products. So they've
- 25:20labeled them like, you can flush this one, you cannot
- 25:23flush this one. I like to think that maybe they put that on
- 25:26weird stuff like stuffed animals
- 25:29and, I don't know, like
- 25:31Pokemon cards and stuff like that, where it's like, this is not
- 25:34a flushy thing. You cannot do it. Don't
- 25:37do it. This scourge of the sewers has been
- 25:40clogging things up for centuries, and only
- 25:43now are we having problems. It's like all
- 25:46the fatbergs have decided now, just like
- 25:49all of the Pokemon game console cartridges
- 25:52have decided to give up their battery life after 20
- 25:55years. Now the fatbergs are rising
- 25:57up, and they're clogging our sewers.
- 26:01The scourge of the sewers is here.
- 26:04These are called
- 26:07fatbergs. Sometime
- 26:10there are menaces there
- 26:13below in the sewers,
- 26:15causing problems for us all.
- 26:18They are the worst,
- 26:21all fat and clumpy
- 26:24and also bumpy. Fat
- 26:27burgs a woo. Big old
- 26:30chunks, uh, of fat and paper fat
- 26:32burgs a woo. In the
- 26:35sewers lies this caper. A big old
- 26:38fat burg's clogging sewers, causing
- 26:41problem, causing spewers. Nothing to
- 26:44do but bust up all them fat birds
- 26:47a woo. It's like soap, but
- 26:50doesn't clean their fat birds a
- 26:52woo. Sanitation. Ah.
- 26:55Buddies are scared country spending
- 26:58woofie bucks on fat burgs.
- 27:01Awo.
- 27:04So, yeah, they have these huge chunks of fat and stuff,
- 27:08and you know what they're doing with it? One company
- 27:11that deals with fat burgs
- 27:14reports they deal with 400
- 27:16to 600 Fatberg related
- 27:19drainage calls per month.
- 27:22That's too many. To get rid
- 27:25of them, they are using some
- 27:28special equipment that breaks the berg up into
- 27:31smaller chunks. Essentially, they
- 27:34have these high powered special water jets
- 27:37that shoot like ten gallons a minute at
- 27:39like 3000 psi. It's like a water
- 27:42laser on these fat buddies.
- 27:45These busted pieces are removed manually
- 27:48or by what I like to call big
- 27:50vacuum. Super Fatberg vacuum
- 27:53at your service. And that's what they
- 27:56call me at buffalo Wild wings super
- 27:59Fatberg vacuum. But after that,
- 28:02they figured out how to convert the
- 28:04fatbergs into biogas or
- 28:07biodiesel. It's long
- 28:09and expensive and a not cost
- 28:12effective workaround, but
- 28:15it is essentially just humans doing the
- 28:18best with this sewer problem that we
- 28:21have. And you know what?
- 28:24We did the best with what we had this week.
- 28:27I mean, I dumped fatty
- 28:29nonsense into my childhood
- 28:32toilet. So we all
- 28:35grew up a little bit today. This brings
- 28:38us to the end of another episode of Privy. Thank you so much
- 28:41for joining us. And thank you for listening. Um, if you
- 28:44would leave a rating or review. Uh, if you leave a
- 28:47review on iTunes, we would love to read that here on the
- 28:49show. Five star options are preferred. Spotify
- 28:52will allow you to rate but not review. Thanks,
- 28:55Spotify. Follow us on social media at
- 28:58Privycast and send us an email, recommendations,
- 29:01suggestions. Say hi. Let us know
- 29:04that we're not shouting out into the void here.
- 29:06Privycast@gmail.com. We'd love
- 29:09to hear from you. As always, we'd like to
- 29:12thank Kevin McLeod for the use of
- 29:14barroom ballet as our intro and outro
- 29:17music. You can find Kevin's music,
- 29:19uh@incompetent.org. His music is
- 29:22licensed under Creative Commons license attribution
- 29:2440. Uh, thanks, Kevin.
- 29:27We'd also like to thank pottington Bear for
- 29:30all the colors in the world as the hunter's anecdote,
- 29:33intro and outro music. You can find potdington
- 29:36Bear's music@pottingtonbear.com.
- 29:39Thanks, Pottington. This has been another
- 29:42episode of privy. Thank you so much for joining
- 29:44us. And now, as
- 29:47always, and make sure it doesn't
- 29:50have paper towel or lady hygiene products in
- 29:53it. Don't forget to flush.