Reliance Industries (RIL), India’s largest private company by revenues, is planning to go green by supporting startups, both nationally and internationally, who have figured out waste management.
The company plans on collaborating with startups and develop a jointly owned intellectual property.
We are looking to fund and are scouting around for all the technology available for waste segregation, recycling, and waste-to-energy. We are thinking about the bets we should be making in this regard, said Vipul Shah, COO, petrochemicals at RIL (Reliance Industries Limited), as reported by Mint.
The Mukesh Ambani-owned company is keen to give back to the environment as there is a lot of environmental damage, particularly to the oceans, caused by the sheer volume of plastic waste.
One of the largest recyclers of PET (Post-consumer) waste in India, Reliance Industries claims that they recycled about 2.2 Bn waste PET bottles into fabric in 2018.
And now, it plans to double the current capacity of PET bottle recycling to five million bottles in the next few years. For this the company has installed at least 150 collection centres across the country to collect these waste bottles for recycling.
RIL’s PET bottle collection initiative directly and indirectly provides employment to around 3 lakh economically weak people that includes a majority of rag pickers.
The company also encourages consumers to deposit empty PET bottles in a reverse-vending machine installed in Reliance SMART Stores, railway stations and various other locations.
To create value from waste, the company has three plastic-to-roads projects underway on a pilot basis. These initiatives have helped to create a solution for the disposal of non-recyclable plastic waste. As a pilot project, 1.2 tonnes of plastic waste has already been used for the construction of 2,600 sq.m of road in Reliance Corporate Park, Navi Mumbai. Further, about 50 tonnes of plastic waste will be used at Nagothane manufacturing division for construction of 40km of road.
Earlier this year, Raymond Group joined hands with Reliance Industries to unveil an eco-friendly range of fabrics.
