Skip to main content

Commuters in Indonesia can exchange used plastic bottles for free bus trips

The city of Surabaya, Indonesia, is giving free bus rides to commuters who provide used plastic bottles as part of a strategy encourage recycling. This initiative is expected to serve the city’s ambition to eliminate plastic waste by 2020. Citizens can travel on red city buses by dropping off plastic bottles at terminals or can use the bottles to pay for their fares. Reuters says a two-hour bus ticket costs ten plastic cups or up to five plastic bottles, depending on their size. Labels and bo
October 31, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
The city of Surabaya, Indonesia, is giving free bus rides to commuters who provide used plastic bottles as part of a strategy encourage recycling.

This initiative is expected to serve the city’s ambition to eliminate plastic waste by 2020.

Citizens can travel on red city buses by dropping off plastic bottles at terminals or can use the bottles to pay for their fares.

%$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external Reuters false https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-environment-plastics-bus/plastic-to-ride-indonesians-swap-bottles-for-bus-tickets-idUSKCN1MX1OD false false%> says a two-hour bus ticket costs ten plastic cups or up to five plastic bottles, depending on their size.

Labels and bottle caps from the collected bottles are auctioned off to recycling companies. The money earned goes towards running bus operations and funding green spaces in the city in Java, Indonesia’s main island.

Irvan Wahyu Drajad, head of Surabaya’s transportation department, says Indonesia is one of the biggest contributors to plastic waste in the world.
 
“Through this initiative, we hope to raise public awareness on the environment, especially issues that relate to plastic trash,” Wahyu Drajad adds.

Related Content

  • Stage Intelligence partners with Smovengo on Paris bike-share
    February 25, 2019
    Artificial intelligence (AI) company Stage Intelligence has linked up with a consortium in a bid to make a Paris bike-share scheme more efficient. Stage is partnering with Smovengo – a grouping which consists of Smoove, Moventia, Mobivia and Park Indigo - to deploy its Bico AI optimisation platform across Smovengo’s Vélib bike-share system in the French capital. The company says its system allows users to collect, manage and visualise data and turn it into actionable insights; it has already been used in
  • ATS wants drivers to stop running red lights
    January 3, 2017
    US traffic safety camera provider American Traffic Solutions (ATS) has compiled a video (link https://www.atsol.com/2016-worst-red-light-runners/) from its red light cameras in operation in the US and wants drivers to see the collection of red-light running crash videos which it says are too dangerous to ignore. According to independent research, red light cameras have a measurable impact on traffic safety; in 2016, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety determined red-light cameras in 79 large US ci
  • Zipcar founder: ‘Car-dominant city has reached its zenith’
    May 23, 2018
    Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase has called on urban authorities to embrace multimodal transport in a bid to improve mobility.“The value of a car-dominant city has reached its zenith,” she says in an interview with ITS International. “The city regulatory and physical infrastructure has been built on a personal car-dominant infrastructure. We have spent the last 100 years making car travel in cities the most convenient and cheapest way to the exclusion of everything else.” That creates problems, she
  • Trust is the key, says Cubic’s Crissy Ditmore
    August 7, 2019
    Trust is the key to encouraging people to take up shared mobility and MaaS services, thinks Cubic Transportation Systems’ Crissy Ditmore. She tells Adam Hill why sharing must be the way forward Crissy Ditmore is on the move. Director of strategy at Cubic Transportation Systems since September last year, she lives in Boise, Idaho, but doesn’t see a great deal of the city as she is “90% of the time on the road”. This is appropriate for someone whose business is working out how to get people from place to p