Families from across Derbyshire learnt all about what happens to their wastewater after they flush their loos and turn off their taps, as Severn Trent’s Education Team hosted a tour of the Derby Sewage Treatment Works.

Families saw the sewage travel through the treatment process from start to finish: from the sewage entering the site, to the pile of wet wipes that people wrongly flush down their toilets, and finally seeing the clear, treated water that is returned to the environment.

Maxine Smith, Senior Education Officer at Severn Trent said: “It was great to host so many families on this fully booked tour. Everyone asked plenty of questions and were so interested in learning more about how we treat sewage that comes into our site.

“We want to encourage more people to learn about the world of water, which is why we host these tours, and we hope more families sign up to them in the future.”

As part of the tour, families were also told about what shouldn’t be poured down the drain or flushed down the toilet, and got to see the mountain of wet wipes that are pulled out of the treatment process every day.

Maxine added: “Every week our teams pull two and a half tonnes of wet wipes and other material out of our sewers, which can bind together with fats, oils and grease that go down the kitchen sink to form really nasty blockages in our networks.

“Even wet wipes that are labelled as safe to flush have loads of plastic in them which can jam our treatment plants and block our pipes, so we want to ask everyone to be a binner, not a blocker and avoid disposing of wet wipes down the toilet, and never pour fats, oils, or grease down the sink.”

Severn Trent’s Wonderful Water tour buses were also on site for children to get stuck into activities such as repairing pipes, unblocking the sewers and having a go on virtual reality headsets, where they were able to track a raindrop from the sky, all the way through to their tap.

Severn Trent’s Education Team are determined to visit every primary school in the region to share their knowledge about water, offering a range of free activities as well as site visits for primary schools and community groups.

The team will be running more tours in February half term and any schools interested can book a free visit from the Education Team by emailing education@severntrent.co.uk.