Toilets specially designed to save water are wasting more than they conserve, the UK’s largest water firm has warned.

Campaigners have warned for years that dual-flush toilets, introduced as more efficient alternatives that were expected to use less than half the amount of water per flush, are more prone to leaks.

The problem is said to be so great that the costs are outweighing the benefits.

“Because there’s so many loos that continuously flow all through the day and night, collectively that water loss is now exceeding the amount of water the dual-flush design should be saving,” said Andrew Tucker, water efficiency manager at Thames Water.

“The volume of water loss is getting bigger every day as more people refurbish and retrofit older toilets and as more homes are built, so it’s a growing problem.”

The campaign group Waterwise has estimated that about 400m litres of water leak from UK toilets every day. It says that would be enough to supply 2.8 million people; equivalent to the combined populations of Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool and Bristol.

The group has said that a single leaking toilet wastes an average of between between 215 and 400 litres of water per day and that between 5% and 8% of all toilets are leaky. And the majority of those use the newer dual-flush mechanism.

This article originally appeared on The Guardian on 29 September 2020 – read the full article.