The City of Rome has launched a new scheme where residents can trade plastic bottles for travel on its public transport system.
Authorities described the scheme as a ‘first of its kind in Italy and among the few in the world’.
In return for depositing bottles in special machines at three metro stations, passengers receive a bonus of five Euro cents in the virtual purse of their MyCicero or TabNet apps.
Passengers can accumulate unlimited points to use as a discount on the purchase of one or more tickets, starting from five minutes after the bottles are deposited. Thirty bottles will buy a metro ticket.
The system has been developed by MyCicero and TabNet and transport authority Atac, who will finance the ‘eco-bonuses’.
In this way, Atac said ‘it will be possible to reward responsible behaviour from an environmental standpoint and retain customers who use the mobile channel, which is constantly growing’.
Atac said the project also ‘contributes to achieving the circular economy’ with all bottles collected becoming new bottles.
The scheme was launched by Rome’s mayor, Virginia Raggi, the city’s councillor for mobility, Linda Meleo, and Atac president Paolo Simioni.
The campaign lasts 12 months on an experimental basis starting with Cipro station on metro line A, Piramide station on line B and San Giovanni on line C.
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