Shanghai's government needs to take steps to recycle waste water to save water resources, delegates at the Shanghai committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference argued over the weekend.

The conference, which continues this week, is the city's top advisory body.

"The most effective way to save water is to treat waste water with a biological technology and reuse the water for cleaning and irrigation," said Feng Maolun, a delegate from the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League.

The technology Feng is advocating produces "gray water," which isn't safe to drink but can be used for some other purposes such as cleaning cars, putting out fires and flushing toilets.

In his proposal to the conference, Feng noted that every year 10 million cubic meters of water is used in irrigation and road and car cleaning in the city. At the same time, the city produces a total of 1.27 billion cubic meters of household waste water a year, 70 percent of which can be recycled safely.

"Therefore, if the municipal government can encourage the use of gray water, not only can we save a great deal of water, but also less waste water will be discharged into local rivers," said Shen Jianhua, a delegate from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who submitted a proposal similar to Feng's.

Neither proposal mentioned how much money it would cost to build the necessary infrastructure to recycle the water and make it available separately from normal water throughout the city.

In many developed countries, over 60 percent of the waste water is recycled, said advocates of the plan. Some domestic cities, including Beijing, Ji'nan and Qingdao, are already building facilities to recycle waste water.

"The city government should educate more citizens about the significance of using gray water and remove their doubts about the safety of the recycled water," said Feng.

(eastday.com February 17, 2003)