AN award-winning fish and chip shop has become an official champion of Scottish Water’s campaign to free sewers of fatbergs.
Cromars, in St Andrews, is backing the six-month project which is encouraging business to properly dispose of fats, oils and grease.
To mark the occasion, the chippy served up a fat-free dish – grilled hake with a special whisky-dressed salad, with £1 from every sale going to the the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
Wendy Frame, owner of Cromars, said: “When we heard about the campaign we thought it was a great idea. We already had a number of measures in place and it was good to hear we were doing the right thing.
“Everyone is much more aware of the environment these days and as a business we know we have a duty to protect it. As well as locals who live and work here, many of our customers are tourists, who come to this beautiful coastal town to visit the beaches and golf courses and historic streets – so we need to look after them.”
Officers from Environmental Compliance & Services (ECAS) are working with Scottish Water on the campaign, and have so far visited 130 food service establishments.
They inspected kitchens and offered staff advice on any measures needed to improve how the businesses dispose of waste. This has included fitting grease traps – Cromars was the only establishment they found to be fitting them correctly.
Frame said that the trap was fitted years before the chip shop opened, so they were ahead of the game, but she isn’t taking it for granted. “We have been told as it should be cleaned out more regularly, once a month, and from now on we will make sure that is done,” she added.
Scottish Water teams attend an average of 95 sewer blockages across Scotland every day – at a cost of
£6.5 million a year. More than half of the blockages are caused by waste being disposed of incorrectly.
It is estimated around 140 tonnes of waste – the equivalent of 280,000 fish suppers – will be prevented from being discharged into St Andrews sewers in the first year of the campaign.
Robert Lynch, operations director at ECAS, said: “One challenge we tend find is we educate staff, but when we return, those staff are away. So, this is very much about ongoing work to make sure everyone is supported in knowing what to do.”
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