RSA Insurance : UK households pour enough cooking fat down their sinks to fill 7 Olympic swimming pools

According to research by MORE TH>N Home Insurance, over half of all households (56%) admit to pouring fats down the sink, including pipe-clogging meat fats, butter, margarine, olive oil and other cooking oils. On average, each home will pour 23ml of cooking fats down the sink every week, totalling 1.18 litres per year.

Consequently, those 15 million households are estimated to be pouring an astonishing 17.67 million litres of cooking fats down their drains per year. That's enough to fill seven Olympic swimming pools and poses a huge flood risk, not just to individual homes but to entire residential areas and drainage systems across the country.

The research revealed that 6% of households pour oil down the sink every day, sometimes up to three times a day and 5% of those people are pouring over 50ml of fat or oil away each time. But this practice means 5% of households have damaged their sink or had to replace their sinks or piping thanks to damage caused by fats and oils.