The sorbet-coloured huts overlooking the shingle and sand beach at Lyme Regis are shuttered for winter. The promenade is deserted, save for a few dog walkers bundled up in coats, hats and scarves. Although it’s late December and bitingly cold, the golden flare from the winter sunshine makes the water look inviting. That is, until Giles Bristow recounts the time he swam into raw, untreated sewage.
“I was surfing off the north coast of Devon with my sister and some friends. Out of nowhere, a huge slick of sewage—made up of used tampons, sanitary towels, scraps of toilet paper and smelly pieces of excrement—started floating towards us. It wasn’t until we were literally swimming in it that we realised what was happening.”
Reports of “shit in the sea” have become a daily occurrence for Bristow, CEO of the marine conservation charity Surfers Against Sewage (SAS). A lawyer-turned-activist, he is leading the campaign against the rising tide of sewage pollution in the UK’s waterways.
The stats are grim: in 2022, untreated sewage was discharged into the sea 399,864 times, roughly 1,091 times per day. Only 14 per cent of English rivers are in good ecological condition. And Bristow believes these numbers grossly underestimate the magnitude of the scandal.
“Water companies are putting profit over pollution. For the past 30 years, the industry has had its assets stripped, with private companies taking money without looking after the environment.”
Alongside running a real-time sewage alert map that shows the safety of water around the UK’s coast, SAS releases annual water quality reports, organises beach clean-ups and connects local environmental groups with national policymakers.
Bristow has always loved the sea. “I was born in Zaire [now the Democratic Republic of the Congo] and lived in Africa, the Middle East and Cyprus.” His father, a banker, relocated the family for work. “As a kid, learning to swim was the most exciting thing. Every place we visited, the first thing I wanted to do was find the coastline.”
After training as a lawyer and later working for a climate change charity, Bristow took up the role at SAS in 2023. “I thought, ‘Law isn’t the way to make systemic change.’ Movements are where societal shifts are created, when enough people become aware and angry.”
He believes the water industry has been “under-monitored and underreported” for years. “With funding for the Environment Agency decimated [cut by 50 per cent between 2010 and 2020], it’s difficult for them to hold these companies to account. Data detailing sewage dumping incidents is released annually, but it’s often a case of the water companies marking their own homework.”
Unlike most countries, England has a fully privatised water system. Today, the majority of the industry is owned overseas, with six companies facing legal action for underreporting illegal sewage discharges. The Office of Water Services, the regulator for the water and sewage industry in England and Wales, recently ordered companies to return £114m to customers through lower bills because of slow progress on sewage spills.
How, then, can we save our seas? “It’s a complex, systemic issue; no one company or organisation is to blame,” says Bristow. “The government needs to enforce stronger regulations. Water companies need a more responsible attitude... The owners of those companies have to take some responsibility, too; they’ve had massive profits.” In 2022 alone, water companies paid £1.4bn in dividends; while Bristow says it’s time to “reinvest those assets,” he admits that “unfortunately, as consumers, it may be that we need to pay more.”
“There are 17m people in the UK who use our waters for wild swimming, paddleboarding, dog walking, surfing, and they are becoming aware of how crappy our waters are becoming,” he adds. Yet he remains optimistic. “Rivers, lakes, seas can regenerate themselves, as long as we act fairly soon. Get it right, and we can restore them.”
