Collect record setting 78 tons of waste plastic bottles for recycling to spread message of Swachhata hi Seva
In a one of its kind collection drive Reliance Foundation volunteers through its Recycle4Life campaign have collected over 78 tons of waste plastic bottles for recycling. This record-setting collection drive was made possible by mobilizing over three lac employees, their family members, partners of RIL and its allied businesses like Jio and Reliance Retail across their several locations in India. The collection of 39,00,000 (78 tons) of plastic waste have broken the earlier record of Costa Rica which had collected 30 tons PET bottles.
The company wide campaign – Recycle4Life was rolled out in October where employees were encouraged to collect waste plastic bottles from their surroundings and bring them to their offices for recycling. RIL and allied businesses across India participated in the drive spreading the message of recycling for a cleaner and greener Earth.
Nita M Ambani, Founder and Chairperson, Reliance Foundation said: “At Reliance Foundation, we believe that caring for our environment is of utmost importance. Building on Reliance Foundation’s ongoing efforts to promote, practice, and spread the message of Swachhata hi Seva, we have launched the Recycle4Life campaign to raise awareness about the importance of recycling. Thousands of Reliance employees and their families across the length and breadth of India have volunteered as part of this initiative and supported our record-setting drive to collect and recycle plastic waste. We are committed to creating a better, brighter, cleaner and greener world for our future generations.”
Reliance Foundation regularly supports clean-up activities in the local community. Over the last year, Reliance Industries employees have been participating in the cleanliness drive of the Mithi River and the Versova beach in Mumbai. Commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Jio teams from across the country came together to do a major cleanliness drive in over 800 railway stations. Doctors and nurses from the Reliance Foundation Hospital have been doing cleanliness activities and community awareness activities in their local neighbourhood. Engaging with the rural community, Reliance Foundation has also been supporting cleaning and recycling activities across several villages in different part of India.
The waste plastic bottles that have been collected as a part of Recycle4Life campaign will be recycled through eco-friendly manufacturing processes into value added fibres at one of the RIL’s recycling units. For over two decades now as a part of its sustainable business practise RIL has been recycling post-consumer (used) waste PET bottles. This is a classic example of sustainability and circularity as it is the only company in the world that has created a complete circle from creation of PET resin for making bottles, collection of discarded PET bottles, converting them to Recron® Green Gold, eco-friendly polyester fibres for use by downstream textile value chain that converts the fibres in to high-value sleep products and R|Elan™ fabric 2.0 based fashion apparel.
RIL is one of the largest used PET bottle recyclers in India and it has developed R|Elan™ Green Gold fabric technology which has one of the lowest carbon footprints globally. This is thanks to extensive research and development, and using its expertise in fibre re-engineering, RIL has created R|Elan™ – a portfolio of speciality fabrics. R|Elan™ enhances performance attributes in all apparel segments, such as active wear, denim, formal wear, casual, and ethnic wear. These fabrics have been created with active participation of Hub Excellence Program (HEP) partners, spread across various textile centres of India.