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Smart Port Challenge 2025
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Managing Garbage from Vessels

Managing Garbage from Vessels

Thematic Area: Next Generation Ports

12) How might port service providers collect and manage garbage from vessels efficiently and cost effectively while overcoming the current solutions challenges of high manpower, expense, and low efficiency?

BACKGROUND

Singapore is a State Party to the International Convention of Preventing Pollution from Ships at Sea and is obliged to ensure the provision of facilities at ports and terminals for the reception of garbage. As such, MPA provides both complimentary and paid daily garbage collection services for anchored vessels in the Port of Singapore. This is to ensure the proper disposal of garbage from the vessels, with the waters kept clean, as well as navigation kept safe. The current contractor deploys garbage collection craft to visit every anchored vessel to collect their garbage. These are labour-intensive, time-consuming, and costly.

SIGNIFICANCE OF PROBLEM

If no garbage collection service is provided, vessels may dump their garbage in the open sea or worse within Singapore’s waters. This would create navigational hazards, pollutes the marine ecosystem, and may pose a risk of damaging vessel equipment. Manual garbage collection is both labour and time-consuming, especially during poor weather or in busy port waters.

POTENTIAL MARKET SIZE

Global port and harbour waste management is estimated at $1.8B+, with increasing regulatory and ESG pressure on port authorities to reduce plastic leakage and marine pollution both within port waters and inland waterways. Autonomous marine waste collection alone could be a $300–500M emerging market, especially in Asia-Pacific.

EXISTING EFFORTS

The contractor currently uses manned garbage collection craft to visit every anchored vessel, check whether the vessel have any garbage to be dispose and collect the garbage by tossing the bagged garbage onto the garbage collection craft from the anchored vessel.

Gaps in existing solutions:

  • Low efficiency with manual collection, needs to improve by 3X
  • High OPEX and carbon footprint
  • Low efficiency in high-volume periods (monsoon, storms)
  • Manual processes during collection and disposal
  • Lacks a fleet management system for service provider(s), with real-time garbage collection information and monitoring
  • Lack of garbage compaction