Water is an essential but often overlooked resource in port operations. It is used to wash container-handling equipment, trucks and other machinery, maintain facilities and support a range of day-to-day activities. Yet much of the water used in these processes is treated as a single-use utility, collected as wastewater and discharged.
Some ports are beginning to approach this differently. At PSA Singapore’s Tuas Port, wastewater generated from washing electric rubber-tyred gantry cranes, together with rainwater, is captured and treated for reuse in washing container-handling equipment. The process involves screening, biological treatment, filtration, and ultrafiltration before the recovered water is returned for an approved non-potable use.
I am not arguing that every port should replicate Singapore’s system. I am simply pointing out that water can be managed as part of port infrastructure rather than just as a consumable.
PSA’s 2022 sustainability reporting recorded 24 cubic metres of potable water savings per year from its standalone mini water-reclamation plants at Tuas. More recent PSA reporting also shows broader water-reuse activity across Singapore, including approximately 8,000 cubic metres of rainwater collected in 2025 through nine harvesting tanks at various facilities, including Tuas, and about 3,000 cubic metres of condensate water reused for equipment washing and horticultural maintenance.
These figures should be read in context. They do not represent a port-wide closed-loop water system, nor do they demonstrate that water recycling will automatically produce significant savings at every port. They demonstrate something more useful: the feasibility of capturing water from specific operational processes and putting it back to work where the quality requirements allow. For West African ports, this raises a practical infrastructure question.
Equipment washing and maintenance can generate significant volumes of wastewater, particularly around container terminals, truck facilities and workshops. Rainfall can also provide a potentially useful source of water, particularly when it can be captured from large paved areas. The challenge is ensuring that these streams are properly separated and treated.
This distinction matters. Water from a relatively controlled equipment-washing operation is not the same as sewage, oily workshop runoff, or wastewater contaminated by hazardous cargo. Attempting to combine all of these streams into one recycling system could create a more complicated and expensive problem rather than solve one. The starting point, therefore, should be measurement.
A port considering water reuse needs to understand how much potable water is being purchased, where it is being consumed, how much washwater is generated, what contaminants are present, where wastewater currently goes, and what portion could realistically be recovered. From there, a pilot can be designed around a specific use such as equipment or truck washing.
This is particularly relevant as ports across West Africa invest in new terminals, truck facilities and other infrastructure. Designing separate drainage, treatment and non-potable water systems into a new development is generally a different proposition from trying to retrofit them after construction.
The digital layer also deserves attention. Water recovery systems can be metered just like other port utilities, tracking consumption, recovery volumes, water quality, treatment performance and operating costs. For ports pursuing broader intelligent mobility systems, this creates another operational dataset that can sit alongside information on vehicles, facilities and cargo movement.
This is where some of the work being explored by WATT around intelligent mobility infrastructure becomes relevant. As ports and vehicle-care facilities become more connected, utilities such as water, energy and wastewater can increasingly be managed as part of the wider operating environment rather than as isolated services.
The business case, however, should remain evidence-led. A recycling system must be sized to actual demand and rainfall patterns, designed around the quality of the incoming water, and assessed against treatment, energy, maintenance and regulatory costs. The objective is not simply to collect more water. It is to recover water safely and economically for a defined purpose.
For port operators, the question may therefore be a simple one: How much purchased water is currently discharged after one use, and how much of it could be safely recovered at a lower whole-life cost?
As West African ports modernise, that is a question worth answering before the next wash bay, workshop or vehicle-care facility is built.
Jama Onwubuariri is Managing Director, TTP and Director, West African Truck Terminals.
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