Today, World Sanitation Day, the company responsible for the municipal water service in Calatayud launches an audiovisual campaign to raise awareness of the serious damage caused by non-degradable waste improperly flushed down the toilet.

The simple gesture of flushing a wipe down the toilet can end up being very expensive, causing traffic jams and other damage to sewage networks and polluting our rivers. Caring for the rivers that give life to cities therefore depends on the proper functioning of sanitation infrastructures, something to which we can all contribute from our homes.
This is the message that the Calatayud City Council and Aquara, the company responsible for managing the municipal water and sewerage service, want to convey to the people of Bilbao with "El Jalón starts here." It is an awareness campaign that sees the light today, World Sanitation Day, with an audiovisual format to reach the "maximum number of people possible," says María Pilar Lasheras, head of the Aquara service in the capital of Bilbao.
In the launch video, the Jalón River appears as the backbone and as a call-to-action element: the river can start anywhere, such as in toilets, in sewers or in the streets and banks themselves, and it is everyone's duty to maintain it. clean and free from contamination. This is how it is staged by the different Aquara workers who appear in the video, who are also guardians of the network of pipes that make up the subsoil of the city.
"We intend to raise awareness among adults and children so that they dispose of wipes, compresses, cigarette butts, masks and other non-degradable products into the container instead of throwing them down the toilet or on public roads", highlights María Pilar Lasheras. To achieve this objective, Aquara will install plaques with awareness messages in scuppers at 20 points in the city and will distribute educational materials for the correct disposal of these products in educational centers in Calatayud.
And it is that in the company they know very well the consequences of bad domestic habits. "The sewage system can suffer jams that lead to floods despite the intense maintenance work we carry out, given that these types of items are not designed to be disposed of in contact with water," says the person in charge of the service in Calatayud.
These bottlenecks translate into service detriment as well as increased network maintenance costs. In figures, the Spanish Association of Water Supply and Sanitation (AEAS), places the extra cost of this problem in our country at more than 230 million euros per year.

SDG 6: Water and Sanitation for all as a roadmap
November 19 marks the World Sanitation Day promoted by the United Nations. This year's celebration focuses on the 3.6 billion people around the world who lack safely managed sanitation services. For this reason, water and sanitation for all is the sixth of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global roadmap for a more just and sustainable world.
This premise is also the basis of the strategic plan for sustainable development through which Aquara contributes to the fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals and the goals set by the 2030 Agenda from the management of the municipal water service. The fight against climate change, the preservation of water, the protection of the most vulnerable or environmental awareness are some of the fields in which the company, together with the city council, has achieved achievements during the more than 20 years that it has been present in the city.
“Awareness has always been an essential issue for us; Calatayud was the first Aragonese municipality in which we implemented the Aqualogía educational program that has brought the natural and urban water cycle to more than 3,000 schoolchildren ”, highlights María Pilar Lasheras who adds that the commitment to sustainability is“ shared with the City Council and continuous throughout the year ”with activities such as water tastings, visits to facilities and another series of initiatives developed on key dates such as the Calatayud Environment Week.
‘El Jalón starts here’ reflects the vocation of permanence of this commitment to sustainability that the City Council and Aquara want to maintain during the next two decades, the duration of the new water contract that they have just signed.