this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The distinction here is she poured it into an outdoor gutter/drain, so a bit like littering. It's a sort of thing if one person does it it's probably fine but if everybody does it can be bad for the environment. Because what goes down outdoor drains is not usually treated. But even if it's wrong at least give her a warning.

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That makes no sense to me, because you will literally have feces from animals, dead birds and other animals, etc.

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

That's kinda what I would think too, but coffee doesn't belong there. If too many people dump coffee it will be bad, like this: https://coloradosun.com/2021/12/27/urine-high-country-lakes-colorado-caffeine-study-human-pee/

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's only not treated because the UK has a massive problem with not treating sewage. In the UK, storm drains flow into the same sewers as toilets and go to the same waste treatment plants, where everything gets pumped out the same emergency overflow pipe into open water because there are millions more people in the UK than there were fifty years ago, and sewage treatment capacity is virtually unchanged because it's cheaper to pay the fines for emergency overflow than to build more treatment plants.

[–] BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That is not correct - the surface drainage system should be regarded as separate from the sewage system, even though both run under the roads. There is the surface water system and the foul water system. It's true that in some places surface drainage may go into the sewage system but that is the exception rather than the rule. Surface drainage is usually designed to move as rapidly as possible into nearby fresh water to prevent flooding.

Surface drainage water is allowed to drain freely into water courses, rivers and lakes, completely untreated. The sewage system is for contaminated water (from toilets and sinks etc) and is designed to go to treatments plants where it SHOULD be treated. It is true that that treatment is not happening, and when there are storms the sewage system can be overrun with water companies currently getting away with dumping contaminated sewage into the rivers which is a scandal.

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I've seen plenty of news reports say that combined sewers are nearly ubiquitous, but now when I'm googling it, I'm seeing some sites back that up, and other sites saying it's only about a fifth of the country, so I don't know which to trust. I can see Ofwat and some of the water companies say that the rules changed (potentially in 1991) so new developments after that point have to use separate sewers, and that wouldn't be that much of the UK, as most building is redevelopment of existing sites where existing sewers can be reused, rather than new developments, and most things haven't been rebuilt in the last thirty years, so I'd be surprised if it was 80% separate if it's only new stuff using it, but less surprised if it's just the Victorian sewers that are combined (and areas that still use Victorian sewers that have been spilling foul water into waterways) and things have been gradually switched over for more than a century. Do you have a source that explains the incompatible figures?