Zazcar became the 1,000th city in the world to offer car-sharing services. Let’s commemorate this milestone with a holiday!

Our good friends at World Streets today highlight a huge milestone for sustainable mobility: Sao Paulo (19.6 million metro population) became the planet’s 1,000th car-sharing city on Wednesday, launching Zazcar.

Make that two huge milestones: Zazcar also became the first company in Latin America to share cars by the hour, opening potentially a whole new continent to sustainable urban autos. Zazcar’s rates start at 22 reais/hour or 179 reais/day (about $11.40/hour or $92.75/day), including gas, insurance, maintenance, and reserved parking — “all in a Zaz!”

For car-sharing aficionados like me, the impressive milestone makes me feel proud of how grassroots community efforts can change the world. Car sharing thrives at the local level — from its informal origins in 1940s Switzerland, to the big Swiss and German co-ops of the ’80s and ’90s, to today’s non-profits and commercial ventures pushing the envelope around the globe. Most new car-sharing organizations rely on the tireless dedication of a few social entrepreneurs who love their city, and who invest their time, money, and sweat round-the-clock, sometimes for years with hardly a pause.

Perhaps we should mark July 15th — the day we reached 1,000 — as a car-sharing holiday, to thank the literally tens of thousands of social entrepreneurs, staff, and volunteers who have dedicated themselves endlessly to building this exciting movement.

Congratulations to Zazcar. Congratulations to Mobility Switzerland. Congratulations to Go Get in Sydney. Congratulations to City CarShare in the San Francisco Bay Area. Congratulations to Victoria Car-Share Co-op in British Columbia. Congratulations to 995 more.

Thank you for the social change.  You’re making it happen.