By saving water, Malaysia can save billions of ringgit for the taxpayer and protect Mother Nature. One very good way to do this is by using water-efficient toilets.

Recently, I replaced two conventional toilets in my home with water-efficient dual flush toilets at a cost of less than RM600 each.  These toilets use six litres of water for a full flush and three litres for a half-flush.

The toilets offered two pleasant surprises. For the smaller flush, when the button is released, the flow of water soon stops. This means only one or two litres of water is used which is often enough for liquid waste. Secondly, a full half-flush is enough to clear solids. This means only three litres of water is used compared to nine litres for conventional toilets – saving six litres per flush.

On average, each person flushes the toilet seven to eight times a day at home and this results in the use of about 70 litres of water per person per day (LPD) in a home with conventional toilets.

If instead a home is equipped with water-efficient toilets, home usage need only be 20 LPD or less for this purpose. This means a savings of 50 LPD or more. For Malaysia as a whole, this would amount to a savings of 1,400 million litres per day.

And this does not even consider the potential savings from using such toilets in public and commercial establishments.

Taking into account non-revenue losses of 30%, the massive Pahang Selangor Raw Water Transfer Project, undertaken at great financial cost (about RM9 billion), at great cost to the environment and great disruption to the lives of our Orang Asli, will only deliver 1,300 million litres per day on tap!

Many countries have legislation in place to make the installation of water-efficient toilets mandatory. In some countries, the minimum standard is 4.5 litres for a full flush and 2.5 litres for a half flush.

Whereas here, when I was shopping around for a water-efficient toilet, the sales assistant in one big store strongly discouraged me from getting one, saying that it may not perform well!

By introducing water-efficient toilets in our homes and implementing other water demand management measures, the authorities can make multi-billion ringgit mega-water infrastructure projects unnecessary.

To persuade the authorities to practise better water governance and to help raise interest in water conservation among the public, there is a Facebook group called ‘Water Initiative Network’ which anyone can join.