How the World's Top Airports Manage Restroom Water — and What Indian Airports Can Learn
An Airport is built to move people.
But behind every departure board, security checkpoint, boarding gate and baggage carousel is another system moving something else water. Millions of litres can pass through an airport every day, not just for drinking or aircraft operations, but for toilets, urinals, handwashing, cleaning, landscaping, cooling and wastewater treatment. And one of the most overlooked parts of that water footprint is sitting inside something that passengers use for barely a minute the restroom. Large international airports can consume anywhere from roughly 1.4 million to 11 million litres of water a day, depending on their size and operations. Waterless Co.'s research points out that restrooms are a significant part of this consumption, alongside cleaning, cooling, landscaping and other airport operations. This is why airports around the world are beginning to look at their washrooms differently.
Airports Around the World Are Rethinking the Urinal
Waterless urinals are no longer an experimental idea restricted to a handful of green buildings. According to Waterless Co., hundreds of airports around the world from regional airports to major international gateways, have adopted waterless urinal technology. Its examples include airports such as Brussels, Copenhagen, Geneva, Belfast and Palm Springs. The reason is straightforward. Airports have something most commercial buildings don't have to the same degree extremely high footfall.
A single urinal might be used dozens or even hundreds of times a day. Multiply that across multiple terminals, multiple restrooms and thousands,or millions,of passengers, and a seemingly small flush becomes a significant annual water demand. Waterless Co. estimates that a waterless urinal can save tens of thousands of gallons of water per year, depending on usage. At Palm Springs International Airport, for example, waterless urinals were reported to save around 44,000 gallons per urinal annually. That is the important lesson for airport infrastructure teams. Sustainability at airport scale is rarely about one dramatic intervention.
It is about identifying thousands of small, repetitive consumption points, and redesigning them. The urinal is one of those points.
An airport restroom is one of the most punishing environments a plumbing fixture will ever face. A single urinal at a mid-sized international terminal can see thousands of uses a day, every day, with almost no downtime for maintenance. Multiply that across a terminal with dozens of restrooms, and water use in the "back of house" not the runways, not the HVAC, just the toilets becomes a line item large enough to show up in a sustainability report. Airports abroad have known this for a while. Indian airports and railway stations are only just catching up and the gap is closing faster than most facility managers realize.
What "water-positive airport" actually means
"Water-positive" isn't a marketing phrase , it has a technical bar to clear. A facility is water-positive when it replenishes more water to the local watershed than it draws and consumes, typically verified against a formal framework rather than self-declared. Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport became the first Indian airport handling more than 40 million passengers a year to earn this status, recognized at the Water Innovation Summit under the NITI Aayog–CII Water Neutrality Framework. The airport got there through a layered approach: over 625 rainwater harvesting structures feeding two new underground reservoirs with a combined 9-million-litre capacity, zero-liquid-discharge sewage treatment plant that recycles all wastewater for flushing, HVAC, and landscaping, and a dedicated potable water treatment plant to cut wastage at the source. Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport reached a similar milestone through 315 rainwater recharge pits on campus and offsite recharge work benefiting nearby villages.
Notice what both examples have in common: restroom water use was one lever among several, not the whole strategy but it's the lever with the fastest payback and the least civil-works complexity. Rainwater harvesting and zero-liquid-discharge plants take years and crores of capital. Retrofitting high-footfall restrooms with waterless fixtures takes days per block and pays for itself in water-bill savings alone.
Where India has already proven the model: Indian Railways
The most credible reference point for Indian transit infrastructure isn't a Tier-1 airport it's Indian Railways, which has deployed Zerodor's waterless urinal technology across hundreds of installations, including in some of the most space- and resource-constrained environments on the network: locomotive cabins. Fitting a working restroom into a loco cabin means solving for zero plumbing infrastructure and near-zero space, which is exactly the profile waterless retrofit technology was built to handle. That single deployment illustrates the broader point for airport facility teams: if a solution works reliably inside a moving locomotive cabin with no water supply, no drainage line, and constant vibration, a stationary, well-ventilated airport or station restroom block is a considerably easier install.
Across its installed base more than 800+ organizations and 85,000+ units, spanning government institutions, defense establishments, malls, and food and beverage chains the underlying technology has saved an estimated 4 billion litres of water. That's a track record built on Indian conditions: variable water quality, high footfall, and maintenance regimes that don't always match manufacturer assumptions from temperate-climate markets.
The Business case for airport and Railway station facility managers
For a procurement or facilities team evaluating this, the numbers break down into four buckets.
Water bill savings. Each waterless urinal eliminates roughly 50,000–150,000 litres of flush water annually, depending on prior fixture design and usage volume. In a terminal restroom bank with 15–20 urinals running at airport-scale footfall, that adds up to a meaningful annual water bill reduction before accounting for the fact that airport water is often drawn from treated, potable sources rather than a cheaper municipal tap.
Reduced load on the STP. Every litre that doesn't go into the urinal is a litre the airport's sewage treatment plant doesn't have to process. For facilities already running STPs near capacity common at airports built for lower passenger volumes than they now handle cutting influent volume from restrooms is one of the few load-reduction levers that doesn't require expanding plant capacity.
Green building points. Under both GRIHA and IGBC rating systems, water-efficient fixtures contribute directly toward credits in the water conservation category, which matters for airports pursuing or maintaining a green building certification as part of their broader ESG commitments Delhi and Bangalore's water-positive status didn't happen without contributing infrastructure like this.
ESG and CSR reporting. Airports operated by AAI, GMR, Adani, and private consortiums increasingly publish sustainability disclosures that specific stakeholders regulators, lenders, and increasingly the traveling public read closely. A restroom retrofit is a small capital outlay that produces a large, easily quantified line in a water-conservation report: exact litres saved, calculated per fixture, per year.
What Can Indian Airports Learn?
Water sustainability does not have to begin with constructing another large system. Sometimes it begins by looking at what is already installed. Most airports already have urinal pans. They already have drainage. They already have plumbing. They already have housekeeping teams. They already have STPs. So why replace an entire restroom when one of its most water-intensive habits can be removed? This is where waterless urinal retrofits become particularly interesting. Instead of replacing an entire restroom infrastructure, an existing conventional urinal can be converted to waterless operation. And this is exactly the approach behind Zerodor.
Why Zerodor Is Different
A waterless urinal sounds simple: remove the flush and stop using water. But anyone responsible for a busy airport restroom knows that the real challenge begins after installation.
What about the smell?
What about maintenance?
What happens to the existing urinal pans?
Will the plumbing need to be redesigned?
Will the facility team have to keep replacing cartridges?
These are the questions that determine whether a waterless urinal works in the real world.
Zerodor was designed around these operational realities. It is a patented, mechanical valve-based waterless urinal technology developed by Ekam Eco Solutions. Instead of relying on a chemical sealant or a replaceable cartridge, Zerodor uses a mechanical one-way valve flows through the valve into the drain. The valve then closes prevents odour-causing gases from travelling back from the drain into the restroom. The result is a urinal that can operate without flushing water. And that mechanical design is important for high-footfall facilities. There are no chemical sealants. There are no recurring cartridge replacements. There is no electricity requirement for the valve. And because Zerodor is designed as a retrofit, existing conventional urinal pans can be converted rather than completely replaced.
The Water Saving Is Only the Beginning
The most obvious benefit is water. Zerodor estimates that one converted urinal can save more than 1.5 lakh litres of water a year, depending on usage. Now imagine an airport with 50 urinals. That is potentially more than 75 lakh litres of water saved every year. At 100 urinals, the figure can cross 1.5 crore litres annually. And the impact does not stop at the water meter. Every litre that does not get flushed is also a litre that does not become additional wastewater. That means less sewage volume entering the treatment system. It can mean lower pumping requirements. It can reduce the hydraulic load on the STP It can reduce the amount of water that ultimately has to be treated, pumped and discharged. For a high-footfall airport, this is where water conservation becomes an operations strategy, not just an ESG statement. Zerodor itself highlights reduced STP load, lower sewerage volume, reduced pumping-related costs and potential contribution to green-building certification as part of the overall business case.
The Railway Lesson: High Footfall Changes Everything
Airports are not the only places where this model makes sense. Indian Railways is another example of an infrastructure network where sanitation has to work under extreme conditions: high footfall, continuous operations, varied infrastructure and enormous geographic scale. Ekam Eco reports that Zerodor is used by more than 800+ organisations, including Indian Railways, government institutions, defence establishments, shopping malls, food and beverage chains and corporate facilities. Railway example matters because it proves an important point. Waterless sanitation is not only for premium green buildings. It can work where infrastructure is busy, repetitive and operationally demanding. That makes the same thinking relevant to airports, railway stations, bus terminals, stadiums, hospitals, malls, highway facilities and other high-footfall environments. The question is not whether these places need sustainability. They do. The question is whether sustainability solutions can survive real-world footfall. That is where technology selection matters.
Why Zerodor Makes Sense for Airports
For airport procurement and facility teams, the strongest case for Zerodor is not simply that it is "green."It is that the technology addresses several operational problems at the same time.
1) Water savings.
Every flush eliminated is potable water that does not need to be supplied.
2) Lower wastewater generation.
Urinals no longer add flushing water to the sewage stream, helping reduce the hydraulic load associated with restroom use.
3) Odour control.
The mechanical one-way valve blocks the return of odour-causing gases from the drain line rather than trying to cover the smell with fragrance.
4) Lower recurring maintenance.
Unlike chemical cartridge-based systems, Zerodor's mechanical technology does not depend on regular cartridge replacement.
5) Retrofit capability.
Existing urinal infrastructure can be converted, reducing the need for major civil or plumbing modifications.
What About Green Building and ESG Goals?
Modern airports are increasingly expected to demonstrate measurable environmental performance. Waterless urinals can contribute to the broader water-efficiency strategy behind green-building programs, while measurable water savings can support sustainability reporting and internal ESG targets. Waterless Co. notes that waterless urinals can help facilities pursue green-building certification points, while Zerodor positions water savings and reduced STP/sewerage load as part of its green-building value proposition. But there is an important distinction:A green building is not created by collecting certificates. It is created by reducing resource consumption. If an airport can demonstrate that thousands or millions of litres of potable water are no longer being flushed into the drainage network, that is a real operational improvement. And unlike some sustainability initiatives, restroom water savings can be measured almost immediately.
So How Should an Airport Start?
The answer is not to convert every restroom overnight. Start with a water audit of the restroom network. Identify how many urinals are installed across terminals, lounges, staff areas, operational buildings and other facilities. Measure the approximate number of uses per day. Check the existing flush volume. Look at the annual water consumption associated with those fixtures. Then calculate the potential savings from conversion. Next, identify the restrooms with the highest footfall. A terminal restroom used thousands of times a day is likely to deliver a very different return from a low-occupancy administrative building. Run a pilot. Select one or two high-footfall restrooms. Install the waterless system. Monitor water consumption, odor, housekeeping feedback, maintenance requirements and user acceptance. Then scale. This approach also gives procurement teams something valuable:data before deployment. Instead of buying a sustainability product because it sounds sustainable, the airport can make a decision based on actual consumption and actual savings.
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Ready to evaluate waterless urinals for your airport or railway facility?
Ekam Eco Solutions can help assess existing urinals, estimate potential water savings and identify suitable retrofit locations for high-footfall restrooms. If you manage an airport, railway station, terminal, mall, stadium or other high-footfall facility, talk to the Zerodor team about an installation assessment. Save water. Reduce wastewater. Control odor. Keep the infrastructure you already have. Zerodor the waterless urinal designed for India's real-world restrooms.
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