Workers responding to a smell complaint have found what had blocked the sewer system – a Kevin the Minion toy.
People in Sheffield experienced difficulty flushing their toilets and noticed a foul odour.
A crew was sent by Yorkshire Water to investigate the cause of the stench and the team discovered multiple children’s toys in the drain, including the Minion plush.
The Minion, a character from the Despicable Me films, looked worse for wear after its time in the sewers but still held its shape despite the muck.
Joe Sykes, wastewater regional operations manager at Yorkshire Water, said: ‘It’s certainly an interesting job being on the Customer Field Service frontline team.’
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He added: ‘In this instance, not only was this a sad end to a much-loved toy, it’s also not child’s-play to remove things from drains and sewers that shouldn’t have been flushed down the toilet, thrown into manholes or poured down the sink in the first place.
‘Anything other than the 3-Ps (paper, pee and poo) such as wipes, cotton-buds, fats, oils and grease (FOGs) can cause really serious blockages, damage property, the environment and cost a lot of money to fix.’
Flushing inappropriate items down the toilet – such as wet wipes, dental floss or nappies – accounts for 40% of all blockages in Yorkshire’s sewers.
In 2022, Yorkshire Water said that ‘millions’ is spent by staff having to deal with the aftermath of flushing wet wipes down the toilet.
The company called for mandatory ‘do not flush’ stickers on packaging.
Water UK dropped its ‘Fine to Flush’ voluntary certification in 2024 on eco-friendly wipes as these still contribute to the billions of wipes clogging Britain’s sewers every year.
There are more than 20,000 miles of pipework in the region that Yorkshire Water is responsible for and it has promised to invest £252million in upgrades over the next five years.
Yorkshire Water manages blockages in public sewers, drains that are outside of the property boundary flowing into a public sewer and drains shared by multiple properties that go into public sewers if the home was built before 2011.
It is recommended that residents check if a blockage is affecting more than one room in the property and whether their neighbours are impacted too, as then it is likely to be the company’s responsibility to fix.
Brits are urged to take care with what goes down their drains with fatbergs plaguing the sewer system.
In 2019 a 40-tonne fatberg the size of a double-decker bus had to be cleared by Thames Water from drains in Greenwich.
Another fatberg, which weighed the same as a small bungalow, was cleared from Canary Wharf in 2021.
The masses can take a long time to clear, such as one in Birmingham which weighed about 300 tonnes. Water services company Severn Trent warned it would take at least a month to remove.
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