Coffee=Water Pollution?

Most of us probably consider coffee a common beverage; we drink it, and what we don’t drink, we just pour it down the drain or dump it onto soil. It turns out however, that one should not just pour coffee down a drain, especially a storm drain. A woman in London faced a £150 fine for pouring coffee down a storm drain. In most places, including London and the United States, it is actually illegal to dump anything that isn’t considered “natural rainwater” into storm drains. This is because most beverages, be it soda or coffee, contain chemicals, additives, or altered water properties that are harmful to the natural water bodies storm drains ultimately lead to.

Coffee itself has a unique impact on water bodies. It is on the acidic side of the pH scale, but its most offending component is its caffeine. Caffeine is a biologically active compound that can affect aquatic organisms, and is recognized as an emerging contaminate, in that its impact is being increasingly realized and studied. The simple fix to this problem is to simply drink ya coffee, not waste it. I might be guilty of forgetting about my leftover coffee for a few days too long and having to dump it. In small amounts, however, it is perfectly safe to dispose of your coffee onto the ground or any systems not directly connected to a natural body of water.

Source: Science Alert