At this point, we’ve all attended more than enough high school health classes and seen a At this point, we’ve all attended more than enough high school health classes and seen a sufficient number of Netflix nutrition documentaries to know that America – New York City included – has gotten more than a little fatter. We’ve also all witnessed the effects of our leaders’ attempts to raise awareness and action regarding our national belt-busting program – motions ranging from new federal requirements for clearer Nutrition Facts labels to our city’s mayor’s attempt at a Soda Tax, which succeeded only in earning him the nickname Nanny Bloomberg. And, lastly, we haven’t been able to escape the growing number of public-health oriented notices in public places and around mass transit stations. Over the course of a few years, these efforts appear to have made somewhat of a difference – statistics point to slowly declining rates of obesity in many segments of the US population. But, we’re far from finished fighting our battles with mass accumulation and, well, fat. After all, as our adoring foreign friends would say, we couldn’t be a city of this nation until we’ve effectively doubled our land mass through literal trash. ‘Merica, right?
According to the DEP, the word ‘fatberg’ combines the words ‘fat’ and ‘iceberg’ to describe the masses of congealed grease and personal hygiene products that have been found lingering in sewers around the world. While this may sound like the subject of a dramatic article one would find in National Geographic (accompanied by a series of hard-hitting photos, of course,) our city and the lifestyle we associate with it is in no way immune to the destructive effects of these unappetizing masses of waste. The DEP puts it very simply – “Fatbergs are HUGE, DISGUSTING, DESTRUCTIVE, and COSTLY.” (Shockingly, the All-Caps comes from the Department’s official statement. ) Although “Huge, Disgusting, Destructive, and Costly” sounds more like part of a rant coming from some overly-aggressive weight-loss coach we’d see on daytime television, it’s time for us to realize that the fat in our cities sewers is as serious a concern as the fat in our arteries. And, because it results from what goes down our toilets, our Fatbergs are very much our problem.
A few moments after I saw this public-health campaign notice, I entered this very subway station to find another large billboard – this one plastered with a giant ad for flushable makeup wipes. Apparently, as New Yorkers who can’t possibly have five minutes before bed to wash our faces (or thirty seconds to walk to the trashcans in our kitchens,) we all need to go out and buy a pack right now. Fatbergs are mainly a result of wet wipes—yes, even the ones that say “flushable,”- condoms, feminine products, paper towels (and all the other stuff) that we flush down our toilets entering our sewer system and mixing with the grease that we’ve have poured down our sinks. And yet, all of the above products are aggressively marketed, and the companies that produce them are in a never-ending race to make them more “convenient” and easy to dispose of.
When our city attempted to tackle our previous “fat problem,” public officials and health organizations took steps to minimize the promotion and accessibility of products that clearly exacerbated the obesity crisis; policies were put in place to control the amounts of calories and sodium in fast food, and policies were proposed and implemented concerning sales of soda and the clarity of nutrition labels on foods in super markets. However, as we begin to address our Fatberg problem, residents of New York City are bombarded with conflicting messages regarding environmentally problematic goods. In the span of one block, we can be told to both avoid disposable wet wipes at all costs, and also to buy a box immediately if we want our babies’ bottoms to be as smooth as, well, babies’ bottoms are apparently supposed to be. Consumers undeniably have a massive amount of power, and the decisions of consumers greatly affect the amounts of problematic products entering our bodies and our urban ecosystems. If we want to shrink our Fatbergs as much as the NIH tells us we’ve successfully shrunk our waistlines, our next public policies may be aimed at Maybelline, and not Mountain Dew.
