What happens to stuff that goes down the drain?
What happens to stuff that goes down the drain?
Where does the water go after you flush the toilet or drain the sinks in your home? When the wastewater flushed from your toilet or drained from your household sinks, washing machine, or dishwasher leaves your home, it flows through your community’s sanitary sewer system to a wastewater treatment facility.
What happens when you put water down the drain?
When subsequent water washes over them, they swell up, taking up even more space in your pipes. Solvent and corrosive materials can linger in your pipes and cause damage by eroding the surfaces. Even flushing down large amounts of water alongside the liquids doesn’t stop this from happening.
What happens when you put food down the drain?
They bind together with fat, grease, and other waste in your pipes to form large blockages that can cause havoc to your own pipes and the main sewer system. Cooking fats, oil and grease congeal as they cool and become solid. The solids stick together, often trapping other foreign bodies in the pipes such as litter or food waste to form ‘fatbergs.’
What should you never put down the drain?
Grease, fat and oils Grease, fat and oil should never be disposed of down the drain. These liquids, hot or cold, will dry and easily cling to the sides of the pipes. This plumbing backup will prevent water from coming through and can cause issues for your whole apartment complex or even neighborhood.
What are the effects of pouring chemicals down the drain?
The most critical short-term danger of pouring chemicals down the drain is water pollution. When poured down the drain, the impact chemicals have on our rivers, lakes, streams, and other water sources cause them to be unsafe for consumption by all living creatures.
When subsequent water washes over them, they swell up, taking up even more space in your pipes. Solvent and corrosive materials can linger in your pipes and cause damage by eroding the surfaces. Even flushing down large amounts of water alongside the liquids doesn’t stop this from happening.
Where does hazardous waste go after it goes down the drain?
Once something it is sent down the drain, it flows through underground pipes that send it to a wastewater treatment plant. Once it reaches the plant, the large debris gets filtered out and the residual water is cleaned out again before it flows into larger bodies of water.
Where do chemicals go when they go down the drain?
When chemicals, both medical and non-medical, are poured down the drain, they enter the waste water system, which usually filters into a local treatment plant. However, these chemicals persist through the water treatment process and end up discharged from water treatment plants back into surface and ground water. Yikes.
They bind together with fat, grease, and other waste in your pipes to form large blockages that can cause havoc to your own pipes and the main sewer system. Cooking fats, oil and grease congeal as they cool and become solid. The solids stick together, often trapping other foreign bodies in the pipes such as litter or food waste to form ‘fatbergs.’