Thiruvananthapuram | The international airport here has received the zero waste to landfill (ZWL) accolade by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII-ITC) Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development, the TIAL said.

The Thiruvananthapuram International Airport Ltd (TIAL) in a release, has claimed that it was the first airport in the country to receive this "prestigious recognition".

"The ZWL assessment verified that Thiruvananthapuram International Airport has implemented the best waste management practices and achieved a 99.50 per cent waste diversion from landfill.

"The airport has successfully diverted 100 per cent of plastic waste and 100 per cent of MSW waste (wet and dry)," the TIAL release said.

The airport achieved recognition by integrating a robust value chain system and adopting the 5R principles of reduce, reuse, reprocess, recycle and recover of Sustainable Waste Management.

The assessment of ZWL practices at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport, was conducted for the financial year 2022-2023, it said.

It further said that the main sources of waste generation at the airport were paper waste, cutlery waste, food waste and road waste, which contributed majorly to the municipal solid waste.

The airport has an environment and sustainability team working on environmental management. Besides that, TIAL also said that the airport has a waste management system that follows the ISO 14001:2015 standard, which aims to improve environmental performance and reduce waste-based cradle-to-cradle principle.

"The system involves waste segregation, recycling, monitoring, and reduction, as well as an Environmental Management System (EMS) that sets and evaluates environmental goals.

"The airport has established well demarcated sites for the collection of segregated waste and transferring it to the recycling yard and recovery facility," the release said.