AWS Becomes First GIIC Tenant to Use Reclaimed Water for Data Centre Cooling

Greenland International Industrial Center in West Java has secured its first tenant adoption of its water reclamation programme, with Amazon Web Services becoming the first company to use reclaimed water from the estate's treatment facility for data centre cooling operations. The GIIC Recycled Water Treatment Plant, operational since the programme's January 2025 launch, has a treatment capacity of 8,000 cubic metres per day, enabling reuse of approximately 60 percent of the treated effluent generated by the estate's wastewater treatment plant. GIIC is managed by PT Puradelta Lestari, a subsidiary of Sinar Mas Land and Japan's Sojitz Corporation, spanning approximately 2,200 hectares in Kota Deltamas, Cikarang.

 

Why Industrial Water Reuse Carries Particular Weight Here

 

The release frames the programme against a specific global backdrop: the UN estimates the world could face a gap of up to 40 percent between water demand and clean water availability by 2030 if current consumption patterns continue, while the industrial sector accounts for approximately 19 percent of total global freshwater withdrawals. That combination positions industrial water reuse as a meaningful lever for addressing water scarcity precisely because industrial withdrawal represents such a substantial share of global freshwater consumption, meaning reductions achieved at scale across industrial estates can materially affect overall water demand trajectories in water-stressed regions.

That water reuse infrastructure requires site-wide coordination between the estate operator and its tenants rather than individual companies solving water scarcity independently, since the treatment plant serves as shared infrastructure across the estate's tenant base, distributing reclaimed water compliant with Indonesian regulatory standards, including Ministry of Health Regulation No. 02 of 2023 and Government Regulation No. 66 of 2014, for various industrial utility applications.

 

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What the Capacity and Reuse Figures Actually Reveal

 

The 8,000 cubic metres per day treatment capacity, converting 60 percent of the estate's wastewater treatment plant effluent into reusable water, indicates the facility is processing a majority share of the estate's generated wastewater rather than operating at a marginal or pilot scale. That reuse rate matters because it directly displaces freshwater that would otherwise need to be drawn from external sources to meet the same industrial utility demand, reducing the estate's aggregate freshwater dependency across all tenants who adopt the reclaimed supply, not solely the specific tenant highlighted in this announcement.

 

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Why This Connects Directly to AWS's Own Global Water Commitment

 

AWS's participation here is not an isolated data centre decision but ties directly to the company's broader, publicly stated water strategy covered elsewhere in recent reporting: a global goal to return more water to communities than the company consumes in its operations by 2030, a target AWS director Saji PK stated the company is currently 75 percent of the way toward achieving. That figure gives useful context for interpreting this specific tenant adoption, since using reclaimed water for cooling at this Indonesian facility is one concrete operational action contributing to a global commitment the company is actively tracking and reporting progress against, rather than a standalone local sustainability gesture disconnected from a broader corporate water strategy.

Saji PK explicitly framed using recycled water as a deliberate strategy reflecting the view that potable water should be reserved for communities that need it most, distinguishing water reuse from water reduction and community replenishment as three separate but complementary components of the company's overall water approach. That distinction matters for data centre cooling specifically, since cooling large-scale computing infrastructure has drawn growing scrutiny for water consumption, making reclaimed rather than potable water sourcing a direct response to that specific criticism.

 

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What This Signals for the Broader Industrial Estate Model

 

GIIC's broader environmental infrastructure, including a centralised Water Treatment Plant for clean water production, renewable energy from solar panels and Indonesia's state utility green electricity programme, and integrated wastewater treatment spanning industrial, hotel and domestic waste streams, positions the estate as attempting to build sustainability infrastructure at the estate level that individual tenant companies could not replicate independently at comparable cost or scale. President Director Hongky J. Nantung framed AWS's adoption as demonstrating how sustainable infrastructure can reduce freshwater consumption while supporting long-term industrial growth at the estate.

Whether other GIIC tenants follow AWS's lead in adopting reclaimed water for their own operations, and whether the estate's treatment capacity can scale to meet growing reuse demand as more tenants participate, will determine how significant this programme becomes as a template for shared water infrastructure across other industrial estates facing similar water scarcity pressures in the region.

 

Source: AmazonNews