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Give it another 20 years of Tory leadership and there will be a complete reverse.
They are meant to be exceptionally rare events because sewage bubbling up into sinks is unacceptable. (This is a small, densely populated country and it has to go somewhere.)
They used to be more common into the 1980s, and then regulation and modernisation caused the rates to drop dramatically.
They are by no means constant events but the numbers have risen in a way that suggests that the penalties are now cheaper than the remedial work and the risk of consequences is collapsing. Not sure if the risks are on the same scale as they were before those regulations were enforced, but people are rightly concerned about the increase; we have slid down the rankings in terms of beach and river water quality in the EU:
https://www.newstatesman.com/chart-of-the-day/2022/08/uk-dir...
I don’t think the UK is unique in this, alas, and to be fair I would still rather have this than issues with drinking water. The water that comes out of the taps in the UK is among the safest in the world:
Coverage estimates vary between 70-97% in 2019. I would assume the situation has continued to improve over the next 4 years so 15% seems like a believable figure.
https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1907510#:~....
I know its a negative stereotype meme at this point and westerners love bringing this old number up whenever India does something good but please do better next time.
[1]https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/rural-water-and-sanitati...
But even in rural areas with easy road access (so not the area I talked about in WV), I can easely see people using dry toilets and putting their excretions in the field. It's not like DIY plumbing for sceptic tank is particularly easy or inexpensive, any person living off grid, by choice or necessity, might prefer 'defecate in fields' (ie: using dry toilets) imho.
Now I remember how some urbanites think themselves above rural people from their own countries, I almost forgot. Parisians are not the only self-centered narcissists it seems.
'modern' hipster composting dry toilets are found at festivals or in 'new rural' houses (don't really know the English translation), but in mountain farms I guarantee you it's not that that they use.
And yes, pit latrines are often in outhouses, temporary or not. 'outside' don't mean 'in public'. Pit latrines and chamber pots absolutely dont count as toilets in statistics. Those are dry toilets. Even if you never stepped in the countryside, look at Wikipedia 'dry toilets', and learn.
https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde...