Eco Bollocks

I spent a dirty couple of hours on Saturday on my hands and knees wearing Marigolds, in all the way up to my elbow.
Bloody blocked drains.
We live in a basement flat of a typical 1860's Victorian 6-storey block; hence all the water drainage from the flats above feed into a couple of drains at the rear of the property. Three months ago I had to clear one of these as it was draining only very slowly, wouldn't even clear with two applications of Caustic Soda. Eventually we extracted from it a grey-white fatty plug about the size of a melon, which had a consistency somewhat like tallowfat candlewax, by forcing a whippy metal cleaning rod round the S-trap and shoving it down into the manhole downstream.
We had a similar problem on Saturday with the other drain, except this time (sorry if you've just had lunch) the blockage had more the consistency of Nivea or Flora and was a rank, fetid smelling black/grey sludge - hence the Marigolds.
Both these drains are domestic water waste, not sewerage (thank goodness) and come from a variety of sinks (bathroom and kitchen) and washing machine outlets.
In neither case did the stuff seem to have food debris in it and didn't have a foody smell so what was the culprit?
Well, having a check around a few plumbing websites it seems that the problem is being seen more and more frequently lately, and seems to be down to a couple of possible causes: the recent trend towards "Eco-friendly" low temperature washes (30 degrees and less) and "Eco-Balls". The problem being that the low temperature wash doesn't dissolve body dirt and grease and food fat, but instead just lifts it into suspension and it is then just deposited into the pipes after the washing machine, and the "Eco-Balls" are used without detergents at all and so don't even try to dissolve the fatty stuff.
It seems that many plumbers are now being called out to clear just this sort of blockage, with the attendant problem that the gunk is rank with bacteria (hence the foul smells) and the black mould being found inside washing machine door seals. Apparently most instruction manuals state somewhere that it is necessary to run a high temperature (greater than 60 degree) wash once a month to alleviate potential problems but most people are so hooked on their green credentials that they don't bother.

No reason for this post, really, apart from a bit of a rant.

Eco-Balls? Never a truer product name!