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Athletes arriving at the Olympic Park are flushing their toilets and enjoying greenery watered with recycled sewage. They are using a purpose-built system designed to cut potable water use on the site by up to 58 per cent.

Thames Water’s £7 million Old Ford blackwater recycling plant produces 574,000 litres – enough for 80,000 toilet flushes – of non-potable water a day from north London sewage.

The Olympic site is fitted with a dual supply network to avoid using intensively treated drinking water where it isn’t needed.

Rupert Kruger, Thames Water’s head of innovation, said: “It’s amazing to think the world’s elite athletes are using recycled sewage, sent down U-bends at homes in north London just a day or so earlier, to flush loos at the greatest sporting event on earth.”

Water minister Richard Benyon said projects such as this had a crucial role to play in creating a sustainable water supply for the future.

He added: “By using ‘blackwater’, which is safely recycled, the Old Ford plant will stop fresh water being used where it isn’t needed, helping to make this the greenest games ever.”

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