Chromium containing collagenous solid wastes from the leather tanning industry requires special attention because of the pressure exerted by environmental authorities for safe disposal. Such collagen-rich wastes can be recycled by adapting environmentally suitable and safer methods based on microorganism and/or enzymatic treatment, so as to obtain a collagen hydrolysate with potential applications. In the present study, chromium tolerant bacteria were isolated from tannery soil and screened for high proteolytic activity by zone-clearance assay and caseinolytic activity. The most potent bacterium, with a high proteolytic and chromium-tolerant ability was found to degrade about 90% of the chrome shavings in 120h and was identified as Alcaligenes faecalis. The hydrolysates at various time intervals of proteolysis were collected, chromium removed and characterized. The hydrolysate was found to have 12% ash and 80% protein or peptides contents after 120h of proteolysis with 3.14±2.0μg of chromium/g of protein. Molecular weight profiling done by gel filtration chromatography using sephadex G 25 and tricine-SDS-PAGE electrophoresis revealed that the major component of the hydrolysate comprised of small peptides in the molecular weight range of 3-30kDa.