“The number was unbelievable,” said James Richardson, of the first times he heard there were hundreds of thousands of raw sewage spills a year in England and Wales.
He was astounded to find the figures were true. “I thought crikey, this is crazy,” said the IT worker, who was spurred to build Top of the Poops, a data-packed website adorned with a poop emoji.
Elevated by a network of outraged citizens such as Richardson, and boosted by the launch of The Times’s Clean it Up campaign one year ago, tackling water pollution is expected to be a big environmental issue when election campaigning ramps up.
Is there anything I can do to help stop these sewage spills apart from not voting for the Tories?