Liu's old toilet was refit as a gift from Shanghai local government, which plans to spend 30 million yuan (US$3.65 million) to upgrade 600,000 local toilets to use less water over the next three years.

"This afternoon, I tried it for the first time and found that it works the same as before, though it now uses much less water," Liu said yesterday after the new facility was installed.

The city hopes to reduce water use by more than 720,000 cubic meters each month, saving 1.16 million yuan in purification costs, thanks to the new toilets, which use only nine liters of water per flush compared with the 13 liters used by older models.

The scheme kicked off yesterday as part of a weeklong effort to promote saving water among local residents.

Shanghai, a city surrounded by rivers and lakes is plagued by the same problem that faced Coleridge's Ancient Mariner when he pro-claimed "Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink."

Zhang Jiayi, director of the Shanghai Municipal Water Resources Bureau, said that only 1 percent of the city's water is suitable for house-hold use, due to pollution in the city's main resources, including the Yangtze River, Suzhou Creek and Taihu Lake.

Shanghai gets 80 percent of its water from the Huangpu River and 20 percent from the Yangtze River, but the cost of treating the water is extremely high due to the level of pollution.

With this in mind, the city wants to save money by reducing the amount of water used and building up recycling programs. Currently, 150 million cubic meters of treated water is wasted every year in the city, according to the bureau.

The city has already set up regulations calling for new homes to be built with water-saving commodes, but this is the first attempt to update the facilities in homes built during the 1970s and 80s.

(Xinhua News Agency May 13, 2002)