In a bid to promote less use of cars, in the Italian city of Bologna, locals and visitors can now trade in acts of green kindness for a free pint of beer, gelato or night at the movies.
The scheme aims at incentivizing people to ditch their cars and walk, cycle or take public transit instead.
According to reports, it is started by urban planner Marco Amadori last year which is powered by the app BetterPoints, which allows users to log their sustainable journeys and earn points. The GPS tracker makes sure that people can’t cheat.
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In exchange for helping the environment, users can redeem their points at partner shops, restaurants and cafés for things like free beer, ice cream, or cinema tickets. More than 100 local businesses signed up for the program.
Dubbed “Bella Mossa” which means “good job” in Italian, the program was funded by the EU and the city of Bologna and recently ended its six-month run which began April 1. Users earn points based on the number of trips taken — the maximum is four a day — not the distance travelled.
To earn a free ice cream, for instance, requires earning 3,000 points, or about 8 single journeys. Last year, the program registered the equivalent of 3.7 million km of sustainable journeys, and 16,000 reward vouchers were claimed.