Grey Power
If the NSW Health Department is really concerned, there’s a simple solution to reducing the potential problems of recycling grey water: eliminate phosphates and salt from cleaning products. Growing up, I remember when Suffolk County banned phosphates, and half the housewives drove into neighboring Nassau County who hadn’t joined the ban (and where the water table ran downhill into Suffolk, making the ban somewhat less effective) to buy foamier soap. That didn’t last, as the inconvenience wasn’t really worth it, and, in the end, the non-phosphate stuff did the job anyway. The quantity of fecal matter entering the environment through grey water recycling would be negligible, and the e coli danger along with it, not to mention that it only requires the filtration of 3 meters of soil to clean out pretty much everything in a litre of water. I don’t have enough plants on the balcony to manage the run-off from my washing machine, or I’d be watering the plants a lot less often (and yes, M., I know I’m supposed to do it more often already).