At Rio carnival, beer cans recycled in exchange for train rides

The Beer Turnstile marketing campaign in Brazil saw carnival-goers hand in empty beer cans in return for a free train ride home. The turnstile saw around 1,000 users per hour, 86 percent higher than usual traffic. The number of drink driving incidents that evening also dropped 43 percent.

One way to encourage people to recycle their trash is to offer something in return – something that Mexico’s Mercado du Trueque scheme took advantage of. Now the Beer Turnstile marketing campaign in Brazil has seen carnival-goers hand in empty beer cans in return for a free train ride home.

Developed by advertising agency AlmapBBDO to promote AmBev‘s Antarctica beer, the project invited revellers at the annual carnival in Rio de Janeiro to hold onto their cans – rather than discarding them in the street – until the event had finished. When they arrived at the train station a modified turnstile – fitted with a barcode reader – granted access to passengers who scanned their empty beer can and deposited it in the provided bin. The collected rubbish was then donated to a recycling NGO. The video below explains more about the initiative:

According to the team behind the effort, the turnstile saw around 1,000 users per hour, 86 percent higher than usual traffic. The number of drink driving incidents that evening also dropped 43 percent. The campaign therefore succeeded on multiple fronts – reducing crime levels by encouraging drunk partygoers to take public transport, reducing rubbish on the street and getting it recycled, saving consumers money on train fares and also boosting the social responsibility image of the Antarctica beer brand.

Are there other ways to benefit multiple parties through innovative exchanges such as this?

Spotted by: Smith Alan