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If you have picked up a bottle of drinking water at our Geylang Road or Nordcom Two showroom lately, take a look at the back of it. You will find a small black-and-white Deposit Mark printed near the barcode.

That mark is worth 10 cents to you. Here is what it is and how to claim it.

What is the Beverage Container Return Scheme?

Singapore's Beverage Container Return Scheme started on 1 April 2026. Under the scheme, a 10-cent deposit is added to the price of most pre-packaged drinks, and you get that 10 cents back when you return the empty container to a Return Right reverse vending machine.

The scheme is run by BCRS Ltd, a not-for-profit operator licensed by the National Environment Agency, and is backed by the beverage producers themselves. The idea is simple: give every drink container a cash value so it ends up being recycled instead of thrown away.

The six-month transition period ended on 30 September 2026, so by now you should find the Deposit Mark on nearly every eligible drink container sold in Singapore.

Our bottles, your 10 cents

The drinking water we hand out at both showrooms carries the Deposit Mark. The deposit has already been paid further up the chain, so when you finish the bottle, the 10 cents is simply yours to collect. Toss a few empties in the van over the course of a week and it adds up without you doing anything differently.

What counts, and what does not

Eligible containers are plastic and metal pre-packaged beverage containers between 150 ml and 3 litres. That covers the usual bottled water, soft drinks, isotonic drinks and canned coffee you would buy for the worksite.

Glass bottles are not part of the scheme, and neither are containers outside that size range. If there is no Deposit Mark on it, the machine will not take it.

The five steps

1. Check for the Deposit Mark. It sits near the barcode, usually on the back label.
2. Keep the barcode intact and do not crush the container. The machine reads the barcode and checks the shape, so a flattened bottle gets rejected.
3. Make sure it is empty. Tip out any leftover drink first.
4. Insert one container at a time. No stuffing a bagful in at once.
5. Collect your 10 cents for every container returned.

Where the machines are

Return Right machines are installed at larger supermarkets (those over 200 square metres), community spaces such as town centres and hawker centres, and HDB void decks. More than 1,000 machines were in place at launch, with the network growing towards 2,000 over the first year, and the target is for over 90 per cent of HDB households to be within a five-minute walk of one.

You can find the nearest machine using the map at returnright.sg.

How you get paid

Refunds go to a DBS PayLah! account or a SimplyGo EZ-Link card. Student and senior concession cards work too.

Two things that catch people out: a PayNow QR code is not accepted, and neither is the SimplyGo app on its own. Bring the physical EZ-Link card or use PayLah!.

A note for the worksite

If you are running a crew, the easiest habit to build is a dedicated bag or bin for empties, kept separate from general rubbish, with a standing rule not to crush anything. A site that gets through a couple of cartons of water a week is looking at a few dollars a week in deposits, and more importantly the containers actually get recycled instead of going to Semakau.

Come grab a bottle

Drop by either showroom and help yourself to a bottle of water while you shop.

While you are in, have a look at the Makita DDF491 18V LXT brushless driver drill on the floor — 13 mm keyless chuck, 50 N·m, 20 clutch settings, and an interchangeable chuck system that swaps to a hex bit, offset or angle head for working in tight spaces.

Geylang showroom
645 Geylang Road, Singapore 389575
+65 6546 7446

Nordcom Two
2 Gambas Crescent #03-19, Nordcom Two, Singapore 757044
+65 6255 3446

Full details of the scheme are at returnright.sg and on the NEA website.