We have put together a series of questions and answers that will hopefully cover most question in relation to who we are and how the website operates. If you have any questions that are not listed, you can always complete our contact form, where one of our friendly team will be happy to help.
The concept of Pollution Watch was created out of two friends and colleagues discovering a similar passion for water-based activities in their spare time. Russ, one half of Pollution Watch, has been an avid fly fisherman for almost 5 decades, and Tim, the other half, being a keen canoeist and boater for many years.
Becoming frustrated at the lack of accountability and action on behalf of industries and governments, Pollution Watch UK aims to encourage the public to report water pollution in the hopes to pressure or hold larger industries accountable so this pressing issue can be addressed.
No, not at all. Pollution Watch UK is completely independant and is a self funded project by the two co-founders, Russ and Tim.
No, not at all. You can report pollution events anonymously via the website and our mobile apps. Email verification will be required to publish your report or update and you will also recieve an option to register on the website.
We do recommend that you register an account because you can then monitor the progress of your own reports and updates from your personal dashboard and, once logged in, you can post pollution events without email confirmation.
We do not publish your email address anywhere on the website.
For public accounts, we will only publish your username if you check the box to say that you wish to do so, when submitting a report or update, otherwise your posts are always titled 'Guest'.
It is important that all pollution events are report, however small you think it may be. We have produced a handy guide that you can either read online or download in PDF format for you to make a decision, click here to read our Pollution Guide.
We encourage you to check the interactive map first to see whether anyone else has reported the pollution event that you have noticed.
If you find that someone else has already reported the incident, you can still get involved by adding an update to the report and you can even include images. The more information we add to a report the more we put pressure on the organisations to clean up their act. So please never hesitate to add updates.
Yes, we certainly do. We have both Android and iOS apps that are available from the respective app store.
Load the app store on your mobile device and search for Pollution Watch UK, select 'Install' and you are good to go.
Best of all it's FREE!
No, not at all. We have developed our website so that it should work perfectly on your mobile device.
No problem! You can gather all the information that you need for your report and if our app detects that you have no signal it will let you know. You can then wait until you are in an area with a stronger signal and re-submit the report without you having to do anything else.
Currently you do not log into the app on your mobile phone at all. All you do is add your username and email address and then submit the report. You will then recieve an email asking you to confirm your report submission, once clicked your report will be live on the Pollution Watch UK website. You can set the app to remember your username and email so you do not have to type it in next time you locate a pollution incident. If you are already registered on the Pollution Watch UK website and have entered your username and email address correctly in the app, your report will be linked up with your registered account on the website automatically.
We do have a road map to develop the app further and add new features but that is in the future - watch this space!