Allianz Services India and Allianz Technology India, the Global Capability Centers of the Allianz Group in India, announced that their Plastic Waste‑Free Rivers Project has recovered more than 1,000 tons of plastic waste from the rivers and waterways of Thiruvananthapuram over a four‑year period since its launch in 2022. The recovered volume is equivalent to 50 million plastic bottles; if laid end‑to‑end, the bottles would stretch approximately 12,000 km, surpassing the length of India’s coastline. The initiative has been fully financed by the two GCCs, which together have invested over INR 5 crore (about EUR 500,000) from CSR funds.
The project deploys 15 low‑cost floating barriers, known as TrashBooms, at critical urban watercourses including Thampanoor thodu, Ulloor thodu, Pattom thodu, Thekkinakara canal, Amayizhanchan thodu, Karamana river, Killi river, Kariyil thodu and Thettiyar canal. These barriers intercept plastic daily, and the collected material is conveyed to three Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) located at Injakkal, Venpalavattom and Vallakadavu. The MRFs are operated by a team of 23 professionals from Plastic Fischer, a German technology provider, who handle recovery, transportation, segregation and shipping.
Non‑recyclable plastic is transported from the Thiruvananthapuram MRFs to the plants of Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Limited in Tamil Nadu for co‑processing, while recyclable fractions are repurposed locally, including conversion into TrashBins now installed at Veli Beach. The project is executed in partnership with local NGOs Thanal Trust and Sustera Foundation, and it receives technical support from Plastic Fischer.
According to the release, 79 % of debris on major water banks in Thiruvananthapuram is plastic, with the Karamana and Killi rivers exhibiting the highest micro‑plastic densities in the region. Globally, nine million tons of plastic enter the oceans each year, and without intervention plastic is projected to outweigh fish in the world’s oceans by 2050. In 2025 the initiative expanded to grassroots programmes in Puthenthope, Kadinamkulam and Veli, shifting focus toward preventive waste management, behaviour change and early‑stage intervention. Employees of the GCCs regularly collaborate with the NGOs on beach clean‑up drives, awareness campaigns and responsible waste‑disposal promotion.
The milestone was formally marked at an event attended by Kerala ministers P.K. Kunhalikutty (Industries, IT, AI & Start‑ups), Adv. Mons Joseph (Water Resources), K M Shaji (Local Self‑Government), Adv. V V Rajesh (Mayor, Corporation of Trivandrum), legislator V Muraleedharan, as well as Jison John (MD & CEO, Allianz Services India), Jayant Tulsiani (Branch Head India, Allianz Technology SE) and Barbara Karuth‑Zelle (Member of the Board of Management, Group COO, Allianz SE). The officials praised the systematic approach, job creation, flood‑risk mitigation for the Technopark and industrial zones, and the model’s replication in other Indian cities such as Mangaluru, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kanpur and Varanasi.
The initiative has also received endorsement from the UN Ocean Decade. Allianz’s GCCs, established as early tenants of Technopark, now employ over 6,600 professionals, making Thiruvananthapuram the Group’s largest GCC location worldwide.