Attempting zero waste at hawker centres has taught me many things, chiefly that laksa is hotter than the surface of the sun and glass does not like that. My heroic reusable container died a dramatic, soupy death, and the pigeons had a buffet. Fantastic for biodiversity, not so great for my pants.

So here’s the actual question: how would a city-wide reusable takeaway container system work in a dense, humid, hawker-centre-heavy city without turning into a cockroach theme park or a water-guzzling guilt machine?

Constraints I can’t hand-wave away:

Stall reality: Tiny prep spaces, zero spare counter, everything is fast and hot. If it can’t be one-handable and stackable, it’s a non-starter.
Hygiene and heat: Boiling soups, oily gravies, chili oil. Needs to handle 100°C pours without cracking or flavor ghosting next customer’s mee rebus.
Humidity and pests: Returned containers sit 2-12 hours in 32°C. If the system can’t prevent overnight stink + roach raves, it will be socially dead on arrival.
Water and energy: Centralized washing can beat disposables, but in a tropical climate with high temps and strict sanitation, what’s the wash cycle footprint per container compared to current disposables?
Human behavior: People forget. People ghost deposits. People hoard “free” boxes until their cabinets cry. What’s the deposit sweet spot that hurts just enough to return but not enough to cause a riot?
Stall buy-in: Workflow must be faster than fishing for plastic bags. Auntie should not need a PhD in scanning noodles.
Transport: Soupy foods and public transport are frenemies. How do we prevent laksa baptisms on trains?

Half-baked proposal for you to rip apart:

Standardized “hawker set” (1 soup bowl, 1 rice box, 1 cup) in a durable, light, non-absorbent material that tolerates boiling fill and industrial wash. Clip-on leakproof lid with a one-motion lock. Color-coded for portion sizes.
Deposit tied to transit card or a universal QR wallet. Tap once at stall to check out, tap once at a return chute to check in. No app registration ritual, no captcha, no soul-selling.
Return chutes at every hawker centre, office lobby, and station entrance. Chute seals, auto-mists a food-safe pre-rinse to stop the rot, stores in a ventilated, pest-proof bin. Nightly collection to a nearby wash hub.
Wash hubs sized by cluster of hawker centres; heat recovery and closed-loop rinse water. Real-time telemetry so someone actually empties the bin before it becomes a durian experiment.
Dynamic deposits: higher for soup containers (leakproof lids mysteriously vanish), lower for cups. Penalty kicks in only after, say, 14 days. Friendly nag before that. Then unleash the Kiasu Tax.
Incentives that aren’t green confetti: $0.20 off return within 24 hours, or queue-jump tokens at participating stalls. Yes I will bring back a bowl for three free wanton.
Accessibility: If you bring your own container, stall gets a tiny rebate from the system for not checking one out. That keeps them neutral-to-happy about BYO weirdos like me.

Questions I’d love brains on:

Materials: What’s the best candidate that survives 500+ cycles with hot oil, doesn’t retain odors, and isn’t heavier than my conscience? PP? Tritan? Stainless? Something space-age and not extortionate?
LCA math in the tropics: At what reuse count do we beat a typical plastic or paper bowl here, given local water-energy mix and transport distances? Show me the rough napkin math so I can sleep at night.
Deposit psychology: What number makes people return within a week without making low-income users opt out? Is variable deposit by container type smart or chaos?
Queue friction: How do we make check-out faster than slapping a plastic bag on it? NFC chip in the lid? Visual codes the POS can read in 0.5s?
Leakage and lids: Any design that truly prevents Soupageddon in a crowded train? Or are we doomed to carry soups like newborns?
Pest-proof returns: Clever passive designs that stop smells and roaches without energy-hungry fans? One-way silicone flaps? Desiccant? Witchcraft?
Stall economics: For a typical hawker, what margin hit or time hit is acceptable? What per-transaction incentive actually moves the needle?

Bonus chaos idea: what if the “return” chute is also a mini steam cabinet that blasts a 30-second sanitize to keep things fresh till pickup? Overkill, or the only thing standing between our bowls and a cockroach startup?

If you were Minister of Reusables for a month, how would you pilot this across three hawker centres and a train line, measure success, and not set off a city-wide soup slip-and-slide?