Reliance employees collect 78 tons of waste plastic bottles, To recycle them into eco-friendly polyester fibres

Reliance Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), announced that through its Recycle4Life campaign, volunteers have collected over 78 tons of waste plastic bottles for recycling. Over three lakh employees, their family members and partners of RIL and its allied businesses like Jio and Reliance Retail were mobilized for this purpose across several locations in India, says a release from the company.

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 aa better, brighter, cleaner and greener world for our future generations.”

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 RIL’s recycling units, said the release. RIL has been recycling post-consumer (used) waste PET bottles and as a result 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.

The release also says that R|Elan Green Gold fabric technology has one of the lowest carbon footprints globally. R|Elan apparently 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.