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Can confirm, binmen hate coffee bin juice

So all the diesel runoff from leaky lorries, tractors, badly maintained vehicles etc and, whatever else that gets spilt on the roads goes into our waterways untreated?

Plus Thames water has been releasing raw sewage into our waterways.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-67357566

What she did was right. It was safe. Your slippery slope would apply to bulk dumping or actually dangerous liquids. In reality, roads and roofs are covered with all kinds of dirt and things, all of which gets washed into the storm sewer every time it rains. But here you are pretending a quarter cup of coffee could possibly be problematic.

It’s already a huge problem as people DO put contaminated water into these drains, probably due to widespread ignorance.

You talk of ecosystems, but we're talking about a beverage made entirely of natural biodegradable ingredients. It's bean water. You may as well complain about the runoff coming out of a nature preserve.

Thanks for explaining

The article was updated a few hours ago but when it was originally posted and accumulated its first slew of upvotes, the fine hadn't been rescinded yet and the only statement from the council was that their enforcement officers had acted appropriately and the fine was appropriate.

Also, in much of the UK, the surface water and foul water drains both go into a single combined sewer system, with areas that have been built up for centuries like this one being most likely to still use that old approach.

Seriously. If you wouldn't fine them for littering by dumping the coffee on the pavement right beside the drain (which it would washinto on the first rainstorm) then they shouldn't fine them for anything by dumping it directly into the drain.

No one is going to get fined for dumping coffee on the sidewalk. But they might get fined for dumping oil or paint on the sidewalk.

This wasn't police, it was council enforcement officers. People too stupid to get into the police.

Fines are for the poor.

Makes people less inclined to fight or ignore it when there's a time limit like that.

It's the same with speeding fines and parking tickets, and the white collar criminals that call themselves car park management companies. Many folk just pay rather than appeal, thinking that the time it takes to appeal will mean they end up paying full price, but I'm pretty sure the clock is paused during the appeal process.

The UK only has one type of sewer, so the storm drains flow into the same waste processing plants as the toilets. However, those waste processing plants then declare an emergency due to unexpected high volumes and just dump everything into open waterways if it's rained within the past week, which, as it's the UK, it almost always has. There are multiple issues at play here, and they're all dumb and foreseeable if you assume companies will do whatever is most profitable without breaking the law, and none of them are this person's fault.

It's the UK. It's a big scandal at the moment that most of the drains lead to rivers, lakes and the sea with only a small fraction of sewage actually being processed before being released from the processing plant. The fines for not processing the sewage were smaller than the costs of building and running treatment plants, so the water companies have just been paying the fines and giving all the money they were paid to build the treatment plants to shareholders as dividends. As no one's broken any laws they haven't already nominally been punished for, there aren't any realistic and politically tenable solutions unless billions of pounds can become magically available.

Is coffee even considered waste?

They are supposed to, except that the water companies just chuck half of into rivers, untreated, to protect their profit margins, and until very recently got away with it scot free.

I don't know the situation in the UK but some countries have separate drains depending on if it's waste water or just a regular rain water drainage. Rain water drainages are often not treated in any way (because why, it's rainwater anyway) but waste water is processed in treatment plants.

That is incorrect - there are 2 water drainage systems in the UK. Surface water / rain goes into the surface system and that flows freely into the water table untreated (rivers, lakes etc). It is not designed for dirty water.

The sewage system is totally separate - that is for contaminated water (toilets, sinks) and that goes to sewage treatment plants. It should be treated before it is released into the freshwater system.

So yes, it IS polluting the fresh water by putting things into the rain drainage system.

They were council enforcement rather than police. I suspect if she appealed she would have been let off, but some folk think then they'll have to pay the full amount because they missed the early payment discount window, which I don't think is the case.

Also, what's the difference between this and pouring coffee in the kitchen sink at home? Those enforcement officers were just chancing it.

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.

It shouldn't be illegal. It's a responsible disposal of an organic liquid.