NEA’s aluminium cans return scheme to help increase recycling rate in Singapore

The beverage container return program, launched by the Singapore-based National Environment Agency (NEA), is expected to start on April 1, 2025. With this scheme, the organisation intends to raise Singapore's recycling rate, lower the quantity of garbage disposed of, and lower carbon emissions.

The programme will impose a 10-cent refundable deposit on all pre-packaged beverages, aluminium cans and plastic bottles with a capacity of 150 millilitres to 3 litres. This deposit will be repaid entirely when empty beverage containers like aluminium cans or bottles are returned to the appropriate return stations.

A deposit mark and barcode will be visible on all beverage containers covered by the programme. While the barcode makes it easier to return containers and acts as an anti-fraud tool, the deposit mark identifies items that are a part of the scheme and, therefore, eligible for repayment of deposits.

The beverage and retail industries would have a transitional period between April 1 2025, and June 30 2025, to remove older unlabelled inventories, which will not carry deposits or be qualified for deposit refunds.

According to NEA, the beverage container return program will aggregate clean recyclables and cultivate recycling habits among Singaporeans. Improving the supply and quality of the collected recyclables would also benefit Singapore's growing recycling sector.

It will be necessary to set up return stations for larger grocery shops with floor surfaces of more than 200m2. The plan operator must meet an 80 per cent return rate objective by the third year. As a transitional measure, return rate targets of 60 per cent and 70 per cent will be set for the first and second years, respectively.