Symphony Environmental Technologies Plc

Symphony Environmental Technologies Plc, the specialists in degradable plastics helped on Saturday August 14th 2010 in Thames21’s fifth ‘Cleaner Thames Challenge’, an annual four-day pan-London volunteering event to help improve London’s greatest natural asset: the River Thames.

Symphony’s staff are enthusiastic about this work because Symphony has developed a special additive - d2w – which turns ordinary plastic at the end of its useful life into a material with a completely different molecular structure. At that stage it is no longer a plastic and has become a material which can be bio-assimilated in the open environment in the same way as a leaf. It will degrade automatically without any human intervention on land or water, without any harmful residues. It can also be re-used and recycled like ordinary plastics.

A team of volunteers from Symphony got (literally) stuck in and helped to remove plastic bottles, crisp packets, pieces of metal junk, scrap tyres and all manner of other items which are commonly found on the foreshores of the Thames in London. Championing cleaner rivers and canals is at the heart of Thames21’s work and they rely on more than 8,000 volunteers every year to improve London’s 400 mile network of waterways.