The Bus that Runs on Plastic Bottles

by Shapol Mohamed

In Surabaya, Indonesia, a metropolis with a population of 2.75 million people, getting around can be very hectic. Traffic jams are the usual and the city desperately needs to encourage more people to use public transport in order to free up space on their roads.

That is one of the reasons why the city has introduced a new scheme where people can get a ride basically for free, all they need to do is to pay in plastic bottles. Surabaya is one of several Indonesian cities that support national drives to boost plastic recycling.

To buy a bus ticket you need to pay five 500ml bottles, or three 1.5 litter bottles or 10 plastic cups. Passengers hop onto the bus at a bus stop and present their plastic bottles and cups that are worth one person’s fare. Alternatively, they can go to a main station to drop off as many used bottles as they can to get bus fare cards stamped accordingly.

The bus companies then send the bottles to other private companies to recycle. In the first three months of the scheme’s operation, 12 tonnes of used plastic bottles for recycling were collected from passengers using the buses.

This encourages people to not throw away their plastic bottles, which in turn keeps the city clean whilst also encouraging recycling.

In fact, this scheme has been so successful that the local authority has announced that they will introduce twelve new buses.

This scheme could be adopted in the rest of the world to tackle litter and to reduce our consumption of oil. This scheme could be as successful as the Boris Bikes in London. Perhaps, this will be introduced in the UK soon.