Overview
- Allianz Services India and Allianz Technology India disclosed on Wednesday that their four-year Plastic Waste‑Free Rivers Project has recovered more than 1,000 tonnes of plastic from Thiruvananthapuram’s rivers and canals.
- The programme uses 15 low-cost floating barriers called TrashBooms supplied by Plastic Fischer to trap floating plastic daily before it reaches the Arabian Sea.
- Collected waste is sorted at three local material recovery facilities in Injakkal, Venpalavattom and Vallakadavu with recyclable material reused locally and non-recyclable plastic sent for co‑processing at Dalmia Cement plants.
- The effort has been funded entirely from the two Allianz GCCs’ CSR budgets with more than Rs 5 crore invested, and officials say the work has created local jobs, reduced flood-blocking debris and removed the equivalent of about 50 million plastic bottles.
- Organisers note the project has earned endorsement from the UN Ocean Decade and is being replicated in cities including Mangaluru, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kanpur and Varanasi as a scalable urban river-cleanup model.