We’re excited to share that Ecoworks has been awarded the DesignSingapore Council’s Good Design Research (GDR) grant to develop a standardised refill bottle and guided refill-station system for Singapore’s heartlands.
This research will explore how neighbourhoods can adopt reuse by default; improving convenience, accessibility and user experience for families and seniors. It also supports Singapore’s broader push toward resource resiliency and circularity.
This is a major step in building the design foundations for a nationwide refill ecosystem.
Why this matters to us
Designing a refill system isn’t simply about the dispensing station. It requires us to rethink how Singapore uses packaging, how we consume everyday items and how good design can shift behaviours at a national scale.
For us at Ecoworks, the motivation is straightforward: circularity should not feel like extra work. We believe reuse can become second nature when the experience is convenient, intuitive, and enjoyable. We want the elderly seniors to refill without stress, we want families to avoid single-use plastics without thinking twice and we want neighbourhoods to become places where sustainable habits feel normal, not exceptional.
This project isn’t just about bottles or stations. It’s about laying groundwork for a viable everyday reuse culture.
What is the Good Design Research grant?
The GDR grant supports design-driven ideas that respond to real-world challenges in Singapore. Over the years, it has backed projects that reimagine food packaging for hawker centres, turn industrial wood waste into meaningful, usable materials and explore on-demand manufacturing to reduce waste in fashion. One of the projects focusing on reuse by Forest & Whale, explored how hawker centres could adopt reusable and compostable takeaway packaging to reduce single-use waste.
Each of these initiatives has used design research not just to create objects but to question systems: how things are made, used, returned, refilled, shared and valued.
Looking forward
Inspired by previous GDR projects that have achieved impact and changed conversations around sustainability in Singapore, we’re excited to do the same with neighbourhood refill systems to address the urgent plastic pollution crisis.
Over the next few months, we’ll be speaking with residents, prototyping new station features, testing various bottle formats and more. We aim to co-create with everyday users and design a system that integrates seamlessly into daily life and makes circular living a familiar part of Singapore’s future.
Stay tuned; We’re just getting started.