In front of my house, there is the small supermarket. When I buy the bottled drinks, I can get them with discounted price if I return the empty bottles that I drank. Some people might not care to take them back but this store policy encourages people to bring bottles to market. If people can pay electricity bill with recyclables waste, how good it could be? There is a program created in Sao Paulo, so I would like to introduce that to you.

AES Eletropaulo is the distributor of electrical power in the region of São Paulo in Brazil. 20.1 million people in this capital city take a quality of life with this group. AES Eletropaulo launched the new program which any domestic customer can get discount of the electricity bill with recyclable garbage.

Around R$ 2 is 1 kg value of aluminum cans, R$ 0.21per kg per of PET Bottles and R$ 0.09 kg per of Newspapers and magazines old papers, which is approximately R$ 200 thousand at discounted rates.

In fact, the price of energy has been increased every year. In the beginning of this program, about 200 people enrolled this program per month to get benefit but the new entries have been on an upward trend. People in São Paulo collect soft drink bottle or cans of beer, carton of milk and deliver them in certain place to put together. They will have chance to pay the bill with garbage. Even people can reset their debts with recycling.

The goal of the program is to protect the environment so that the consumers do not pay back with cash. Since it started in 2013, 34 thousand customers participated in the program in 2015, which leads to a total of 2.7 billion tonnes of recyclable waste collection. In fact, this program contributes to reduce 7 tonnes in CO2 emission and save 11 MWh of electricity. However, most notable achievement is the clean street.

In the beginning, it is difficult to start to take an action. The motivation to encourage people to perform is important. However, still there are some streets that piled up with a lot of garbage. Make a valuable policy, program and project is significant. In addition, promoting them to people is very meaningful because make the practice become the matter.

Source : EcoManagement