If you are someone who was born in the early 1990s or, say, a decade earlier, you would have grown up watching two horrifying images or snippets of river Yamuna. One of these would be the one where the river looks no better than the Najafgarh Nallah, full of plastic and filth, and the other would be of soapy bubbles forming on the river near the dhobi ghat regions in specific.
Now, it would be safe to assume that you would have, either on Facebook or through Whatsapp forward of a particular family member seen a certain kind of meshy installation in some river in New Zealand that saves the plastics from getting into the river. The location would have varied between New Zealand, England, or the USA, but you would have seen something like that.
Hoping that this would have tickled some imagination in your brain, the least of it, you would have imagined what something like this would look like. Now, here is the thing- this “thing of the foreign countries” is getting implemented right in our neighbourhood Agra! So the city of the Taj, which is also notoriously known for its terrible water quality and breakout of several water-borne diseases every year, will finally have some respite.
Remember, we once wrote an article about “The Good Capitalist” well, a few more names get added to it in the form of Ambuja Cements’ top brass. Geocycle Bubble Barrier, the pilot project, was commissioned on the Mantola Canal in April 2021. Until September, the barrier had thwarted 500 tonnes of plastic waste from being leaked into the Yamuna River. What happened to the plastic waste, though, you may ask!
The good news is that after the success of the first pilot in Agra, the second project is already underway in Varanasi. The equipment will be installed on the Varuna River, right before the confluence point of the Varuna and the Ganges. This project is currently in the final phase of data collection and scope finalization with the local municipality.
In the words of Mr Neeraj Akhoury, CEO India- Holcim and Managing Director & CEO of Ambuja Cements Ltd, Geocycle– the waste management arm of the Holcim group is committed to building a sustainable future by adopting clean and green technologies. The aim is to recover the energy safely and recycle the material waste such that the zero residues remain. The firm is also currently exploring another bubble barrier in Gujarat.
Now, isn’t that something exciting and worth looking forward to!
Do you have something like this or any sustainability warrior that you would want to promote?
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