Company
Built to reward
responsibility.
The world built systems that reward consumption. rewatr builds systems that reward responsibility.
Positioning
rewatr is not —
- a recycling company
- a vending machine company
- a waste management company
- a bottled water company
- a crypto company
- a sustainability consultancy
rewatr is the world's first Environmental Rewards Infrastructure.
The reverse vending machine is simply the first interface into the platform. The long-term objective is to operate the layer that rewards every environmentally positive action a person takes.
The story behind rewatr
It did not start with technology. It started with a beach.
The founder spent many weekends inside Sri Lanka's beach party culture, around small coastal venues where the crowd knew each other. The parties then were smaller and less commercial, and there was a shared habit of clearing up before leaving.
Years later the entertainment industry changed shape. Concerts and festivals grew into large-scale productions. The events got bigger, the crowds got bigger, and so did the waste. Morning photographs of bottles, cans and rubbish across public space became a familiar image, and with them came negative public perception, rising clean-up costs for organisers, and an operational burden that municipalities inherited by default.
Looking at that chain closely, one thing stood out. Everyone was paying to solve the problem after it had already happened. The organiser paid. The municipality paid. Waste contractors were paid. Sponsors funded environmental campaigns. The only person able to prevent the problem in the first place — the attendee holding the bottle — had no meaningful reason to behave any differently.
That observation became the foundation of rewatr. Instead of spending only on the clean-up, what happens if the same money rewards the correct behaviour before the waste reaches the ground?
The founder had been following ourwatr, founded by Abhinav Murali: free drinking water funded by brand sponsorship. It was a simple idea, and it showed clearly that commercial incentives and public benefit can point in the same direction. rewatr was never intended to copy it. It extends the philosophy: reward people with sponsored hydration after a verified environmental action.
Recycle. Return. Receive. That loop is the whole company. The first application is cleaner events across Sri Lanka. The longer ambition is the Environmental Rewards Infrastructure that makes responsible behaviour worth something wherever people gather.
Cleaner cities may not arrive by persuading people to care more than they already do. They are more likely to arrive when the responsible choice is also the one worth making.
Meet the founder
A career spent designing systems that shape behaviour.
The founder's professional career is in financial regulation, governance and compliance, working across regulated financial institutions operating under internationally recognised regulatory frameworks — including institutions regulated by the ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). The work has covered compliance, financial crime and AML, risk, governance and regulatory frameworks. The founder is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS).
The qualifications matter less than what the work teaches. Compliance, done properly, is not paperwork. It is the design of systems that influence how people behave at scale. The systems that succeed are the ones that make the correct action easier than the incorrect one; the ones that fail are the ones that rely on goodwill and reminders.
rewatr applies that same thinking outside financial services. Instead of engineering the conditions for regulatory compliance, it engineers the conditions for environmental responsibility — verified, rewarded and recorded rather than requested.
The founder has always been entrepreneurial, consistently working through ideas that solve practical problems through systems that can scale rather than campaigns that cannot. rewatr is where those threads meet: systems thinking, behavioural incentives, technology, commercial sustainability and entrepreneurship in one company.
Timeline
How the thinking arrived here.
- 01
Professional career
Financial regulation, governance and compliance across internationally regulated institutions.
- 02
Systems thinking
Learning that behaviour follows design, and that good systems outperform good instructions.
- 03
The event problem
Watching Sri Lanka's events grow, and the waste grow with them.
- 04
Sponsored hydration
Seeing, through ourwatr, that brands will fund a public good when the exchange is clear.
- 05
rewatr
Recycle. Return. Receive. A verified action, rewarded on the spot.
- 06
Launch in Sri Lanka
Events and public gatherings first, where the problem and the sponsor are both already present.
- 07
The longer view
Environmental Rewards Infrastructure wherever people gather.
In the founder's words
Eight things we keep coming back to.
“People are not the problem. The absence of a reason is the problem.”
“Good systems outperform good intentions, every time and in every industry.”
“Everyone in this chain was already paying. We only changed who gets paid, and when.”
“Compliance taught me one thing worth carrying: make the right action the easy one.”
“A campaign asks. A system arranges things so the asking is unnecessary.”
“If responsibility has no value, do not be surprised when it is not chosen.”
“The infrastructure that works is the kind nobody stops to think about.”
“We are not trying to change how people feel. We are changing what a bottle is worth to them.”
Acknowledgement
rewatr's sponsored hydration model was inspired by ourwatr, founded by Abhinav Murali, whose pioneering approach to funding free drinking water through brand partnerships demonstrated how commercial incentives can create meaningful public benefit. Building on that philosophy, rewatr connects sponsored hydration to verified environmental action, creating measurable value for individuals, event organisers, brands and communities.
Philosophy
What we mean when we describe the company.
Swipe →
Values
Eight rules we hire and decide against.
Reward over punishment
Fines create resentment. Incentives create repetition.
Behaviour over awareness
Campaigns are measured in reach. We are measured in returns.
Joy over obligation
If it feels like a chore, it will not scale.
Community over transactions
Individuals start. Teams sustain.
Technology over bureaucracy
Infrastructure should be installed, not legislated.
Transparency over marketing
Every claim traces to a verified event.
Evidence over assumptions
We publish the method, not just the number.
Planet and people before profit
The economics only work if both are served.
Where we operate
Headquartered in Sri Lanka. Designed for every market after it.
rewatr is a global environmental technology company that launches in Sri Lanka: dense urban returns, high mobile and QR adoption, severe public littering pressure, and a deployment cost low enough to prove the model quickly. Nothing in the architecture, brand or operating model is specific to one country.
Year 1
Sri Lanka
Dense urban returns, high QR adoption, low deployment cost.
Year 2
Maldives · India
Tourism pressure, ESG mandates and population density.
Year 3
Indonesia · Thailand · Malaysia · Singapore
Regulated deposit schemes and mature event infrastructure.
Year 4
Australia
Government-backed container deposit programmes.
Year 5
Europe · United Kingdom · North America
Mature deposit-return markets seeking a rewards layer.