UK Nature and Environment

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England won’t adopt EU river pollution rules for pharma and cosmetics firms (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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New EU rules which introduce “polluter pays” principles to get pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies to pay for the pollution they cause in rivers will not be adopted by the government in England, as campaigners say the country is falling behind.

Lawmakers in Europe have signed off on an update to the urban waste water treatment (UWWT) directive, which is to further tighten restrictions on pollution. More nutrients from agricultural waste and sewage will have to be removed from waterways under the new rules. It also for the first time applies standards to micropollutants such as chemicals from pharmaceutical waste.

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[–] SonnyVabitch 10 points 11 months ago

Sewage has long been a problem in UK rivers and on UK beaches.

The current regulations are not enforced, so introducing stricter standards would have precious little impact unless the regulators grow some balls and teeth. Right now, sewage companies are allowed to dump raw, untreated waste water (yeah, poop) into the environment under certain extreme circumstances, however, in their interpretation, those circumstances include it being a Wednesday..