ReBus: a swap bus dressed as a discount store where everything costs €0 (interview)

Reach people who browse retail leaflets daily and never hear sustainability language, without the patronizing tone that puts them off eco campaigns.

Dress a free bring-and-take bus in discount-store triggers — giant prices, 'It can't get any cheaper', '€0' — so non-ecologists walk in.

In workshops with students of the School of Applied Arts and Design Pula (technical work by the Industrial and Crafts School), promo tropes became literal instructions: no checkout, no receipt — repurposed buses where you bring what you no longer need and take what you do, free.

Studio Sonda says 126 cubic meters of items were exchanged in the first month and 40 tons of waste prevented since launch (self-reported in the interview); the project won golds at IdejaX in the Miscellaneous, Branding and Nature categories.

In an interview with Media Marketing, Studio Sonda creative directors Jelena Fiškuš and Sean Poropat recount how ReBus began: at a dinner, a waste-separation conversation surfaced the statistic that more than half of people don't recycle. Those who already recycle will find a center anyway, so the team targeted the other extreme — the audience that browses retail leaflets daily for the cheapest products — without the 'classic educational, somewhat patronizing language of sustainability'.

The answer borrowed every trigger of the discount store: strong colors, massive typography, 'promotional' stickers and messages like 'Permanently low price', 'It can't get any cheaper' and '€0'. In ReBus these mean exactly what they say — there is no checkout and no receipt. Repurposed buses are free bring-and-take stations: drop off what you no longer need, take what you do. Students of the School of Applied Arts and Design Pula wrote the slogans in workshops, their uninhibited copy becoming part of the identity, with the Industrial and Crafts School doing the technical work.

The directors say the numbers surprised them: 126 cubic meters of items exchanged in the first month alone and 40 tons of waste prevented since launch (self-reported in the interview). The buses did not become 'dumping grounds for old things' but spaces for encounters, repair advice and object stories — and the project won golds at IdejaX in the Miscellaneous, Branding and Nature categories.

It spoke the language of the audience it wanted: discount-store aesthetics instead of eco-moralizing.

The slogans only work because the promise is physically kept — a joke becomes an identity when the space can fulfill it, as Fiškuš and Poropat put it.

Students wrote the copy in workshops, importing the directness professionals have learned to design away.

The infrastructure was real — repurposed buses with clear rules — so the stunt left behind a habit rather than a headline.

Meet the audience in the language they already trust: the bait of a promo leaflet can lead somewhere a sustainability poster never could.

Studio Sonda says ReBus has had 'a great start' and hopes it becomes a permanent bring-and-take station; the directors would like to design tools that further encourage the exchanges between visitors.