The 2017 London Fatburg

In 2017 a record-breaking fatberg weighing the same as 11 double-decker buses and stretching the length of two football pitches was blocking a section of London's ageing sewage network... The picture below shows a small section of the burg near the Tower of London.

The congealed mass of fat, wet wipes and nappies is one of the biggest ever found and would have risked raw sewage flooding on to the streets in Whitechapel, east London, had it not been discovered during a routine inspection. Workmen armed with shovels and high-powered jets worked seven days a week to break it up.

Thames Water's head of waste networks, Matt Rimmer, said at the time: 'This fatberg is up there with the biggest we’ve ever seen. It's a total monster and taking a lot of manpower and machinery to remove as it's set hard. - It's basically like trying to break up concrete. It's frustrating as these situations are totally avoidable and caused by fat, oil and grease being washed down sinks and wipes flushed down the loo.'