London’s fatberg on show: ‘We thought of pickling it’
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Pour it in an empty milk carton or whatever and throw it in the household trash. And pour a full kettle of boiling water down your kitchen sink drain once in a while, it'll prevent fat from collecting and it'll kill any nasty smells, too.
E: "Ninety three per cent of its complex structure was said to consist of the element “wet wipe”"
And don't flush wet wipes! Why do people still think this is OK?
Because it literally says "flushable" on them?
Consumers' trust in marketing is mindblowing.
On the other hand, I don't feel like consumer should have to care about this at all. If it says flushable, it should be flushable. I'd trust relevant agencies to enforce this, just like they already enforce "free range", "organic" and "juice" - at least here in UK those terms have a legal meaning behind them and consumers can safely know they get what they pay for. If a wipe says "flushable" but it isn't, then that should be rectified on the regulatory level.
Wet wipes are stored wet, for weeks, months or years. They do not decompose, in fact they stand up very well to liquids without losing structural integrity.
Applying just a bit of critical thought based on those observations, makes it abundantly clear that wet wipes will not dissolve in the wet environment of a sewer, and will in fact very easily get caught and cause a blockage.
So what am I supposed to do with it? Put it in the trash? That's not acceptable for the same reason that putting anything liquid in the rubbish bin isn't acceptable. :/
This isn't quite as bad as saying "don't poop in the toilet; wait for it to dry out before putting it in the trash", but it's in the same neighborhood.
Neighborhood? It's not even in the same city. Your toilet was specifically designed to consume poop. The same cannot be said for cooking fats/oils and the sewer system.
In most places, that can be said. In places where it can't, you need a more comprehensive solution than "don't do that".
It's made of something meant to be stored for very long periods in water without losing cohesion.
Yeast and bacteria are not the same thing. Practically, bleach doesn't kill yeast - if you try to kill fungus in your shower or on a wall with bleach, what that does is make it white. Which to us is a strong indication that it's dead, but it probably isn't.
To clean fungus from your shower, for example, you need to mix vinegar and fresh bleach with cold water (of which the fumes can actually kill you as well) and use the solution properly, or use an industrial cleaning agent.
Of course, someone who bleaches their shower will probably also wash it after (you should wash it _first_ before applying bleach), which might simply _physically remove_ most of the fungus from the surface. But depending on the solution you use, the fungus won't actually die.
Note that the above is mostly true in household use of bleach, and not in correct use. Bleach _does_ kill most fungus if used correctly, but essentially noone does. Hot water significantly reduces the effectiveness of bleach, and so does using _more_ than you should, and also it loses effectiveness rapidly when it comes in contact with unclean surfaces, fat/organic material (which there is plenty of on your wall), etc, and also doesn't have a long shelf-life (20% effectiveness lost yearly if stored properly). It also needs 10-30 minutes of contact time, compared to some prepared solutions that are 90% effective in a few seconds, and 95% effective after 10 seconds.
you need to mix vinegar and fresh bleach
with cold water (of which the fumes can
actually kill you as well)
Essentially, you use the vinegar to adjust the pH of the water to the correct level - 8.0 - to get the right effect from the bleach (chlorine). Again, I have to stress what I said in my first post, that this _can be deadly for you_ if you don't use it correctly.
http://podbay.fm/show/75092679/e/1175200200 might be a better link, I'm not sure. Interview starts around 9:30.
Charlie is the inventor of Star San, a sanitizing solution used in breweries and by homebrewers. Which should make you skeptical, but don't be. He's essentially an expert who made a fantastic product, and only wants to help. In the podcast he outlines how to use normal household products as replacements for his products.
I haven't listened to it since 2012 or so, so if I am mistaken about the source, please let me know and I'll find the correct source of the information in my original post.
That's interesting. I haven't made real sourdough for a long time, but I do bake bagels, bread, and pizza dough pretty regularly. While London tap water does work, I've noticed on many occasions that the dough rises a lot faster and requires much less yeast when using filtered or bottled water (I usually use the cheap Tesco Ashbeck water that you buy in big 5L bottles) compared to using straight tap water.
But whether this is due to chlorination or other factors (London water is notoriously "hard", too) I'm not sure.
The reality is that if you have people equipped to poison the water supply, they will be able to. Most water systems have multiple interconnects with neighboring systems to allow exchange of treated water. Security is typically nonexistent.
The good news is that that type of attack isn’t particularly useful as a terrorist event and is likely low risk.
Texas is putting it back into the municipal system.
https://www.texastribune.org/2012/06/11/texas-gets-creative-...
Basically, water treatment plants have to make human-safe water, but then they dump it into rivers or the aquifer, where it mixes with other water and is pulled out again downstream for purification. The logic is that we may as well skip the "mix it with untreated water" stage.
Google "toilet to tap" for more examples.
Bill Gates drank some:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/10/3761823...
I suspect because it's been cooked and lost all its emulsifiers, resulting in a hydrophobic blob. Water-based bacteria just slide off. I've seen cooked fat sit around in a kitchen for ages with no visible decay effects (but I wouldn't use it for cooking!)
In anaerobic conditions, you get hydrolysis of fat, in which the water content is removed and the fats end up saturated and indigestible further by anaerobic processes. Cf. Corpse Wax.
In aerobic conditions, they'll be broken down into aldehydes and ketones.
I'm guessing that the interior of a monstrous fatberg is rather anaerobic, so you just end up with a great big blob of saturated fatty acids.
Here's a great example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdKzWQOVET4
OK, I understand coins, phones, jewellery and even hand grenades. But how do you flush a motorbike or a pram? :-O
The fatberg should be preserved as a monument to the staggeringly wasteful nature of our current culture. Then keep it on exhibit even after we reach a sustainable future, to remind people what things were like before we started acting more responsibly towards our planet.