As an experiment, I caught all of the water coming out of the washing
machine this morning in buckets. To my amazement, I captured 10 buckets
from the wash cycle and another 10 buckets from the rinse cycle! At an
average of 8 litres per bucket, that's a helluva lot of water - enough to
water my modest suburban garden. My top loading Whirlpool 7244E has Small,
Medium, Large and Extra Large settings and I had it set on Large. So, since
we do about four loads per week, Melbourne's new regime which permits
watering only by hand on two days per week is not the problem I had thought
it was going to be, provided I can find the time to collect the water from
the washing machine. The detergent I've got is Duo, which claims 3.1 grams
of phosphorus per wash, supposedly half the maximum set by the industry's
own standard. No idea if 3.1 is acceptable for natives or not, but I'm a
bit nervous about it so I'll look for one of the liquid detergents at the
supermarket like Aware or Planet Ark. I could just use the rinse cycle
water, but that seems a terrible waste.