Dirty business with Bois y Caca

It’s smelly and dirty work needing a strong stomach and a great sense of humour. Hold your nose as S4C is about to take you beyond the waste and sewage to meet Bois y Caca as they go about their daily working routines.

“Your business is our business!” according to Aberystwyth based Plynlimon Waste Services’ slogan. In the special programme on Thursday 6 September, production company Telesgop’s cameras will offer a behind-the-scenes look at PWS and Welsh Water, two companies dealing with waste.

But who are the brave workers collecting your stools and what kind of people are they?

The programme will follow the process all the way from your toilet. From there, Luned, Emyr and Aled Thomas of PWS collect the filthy water from the underground pipes by pumping the waste to their lorries, before transporting to Welsh Water factories.

“We get all sorts of things coming down through the pipes – shirts, boxer shorts, knickers! Where they all come from, I have no idea!” explains Siôn Ridley, one of the Welsh Water employees featured in the programme. “Once you’ve flushed that chain, you forget about it don’t you? It’s gone and it isn’t a problem for you then.”

And what happens after Siôn and his co-workers Ian Williams and Paul Williams deal with the sewage in the factories? How do they re-use the waste to create energy or spread over land as fertiliser?

Producer Gareth Vaughan Jones says, “In the programme we’ll concentrate on the characters working in this dirty and often smelly industry. These are the people who deal with your waste day in day out and don’t flinch in dealing with the smell and faeces. Without them, our modern lives would be quite miserable!”