Bebat

Anyone who produces, imports or sells batteries on the Belgian market has clear responsibilities. Batteries must be registered correctly, the environmental contribution must be arranged, and companies must be affiliated with Bebat.

The problem is that the battery market is growing faster than awareness of those obligations. Particularly with relatively new products such as home batteries and plug-and-play batteries, blind spots are emerging. Batteries are reaching the market today with no clear plan for what happens when they reach the end of their life. That’s not a mere paperwork issue. Batteries that are not registered correctly today can cause major problems for collection and recycling in a few years’ time.

A campaign about declaration obligations, environmental contributions and producer responsibility doesn’t sound very exciting. So, instead of leading with the rules, we led with the result: making sure the batteries of today are ready for tomorrow. That’s how RecyKlaar was born. A concept that distils a complex responsibility into something everyone immediately understands. Is a battery registered correctly and is everything arranged for future collection and recycling? Then it’s RecyKlaar. This way, RecyKlaar became a campaign idea, a practical check and a quality mark all at once.

With Are you RecyKlaar? we speak directly to the companies and professionals who produce, import, install or sell batteries. Not with a wagging finger, but with a concrete invitation to check whether everything is properly in order. Because in a fast-changing market, not everyone is aware of their responsibilities. And those who are doing things right should be able to show it.

This way, RecyKlaar becomes more than a legal obligation. It also becomes a selling point. A way for producers, retailers and installers to show their customers that their batteries are registered correctly and that everything is in place for future collection and recycling. Being RecyKlaar is something worth showing off.

RecyKlaar needed to do more than raise awareness. So, we built the campaign around a clear next step.

Through the campaign and the RecyKlaar platform, batteries and suppliers can be checked. Anyone who discovers that a battery is not registered with Bebat can report it immediately. Public attention becomes an extra layer of oversight. The campaign rolled out across radio, print, digital, social and PR, bringing the issue to the attention of the sector itself while also generating broader scrutiny of what reaches the market.

We also called on installers to take action: sign up with Bebat and become a RecyKlaar partner. They could request their RecyKlaar stickers to contribute to transparent registration and to reassure consumers. Those who weren’t members yet got tools to check whether they were compliant and to join.

The response was immediate. Within a single day, Bebat received more than 400 complete reports from consumers about batteries that were not registered in the database. Not casual checks, but concrete dossiers that Bebat can now investigate further and that could expose potential free-riders. The campaign was already helping to identify companies that may be bringing batteries onto the Belgian market without meeting their obligations, even before it had fully launched.

From knowing there’s a problem to making visible exactly where it lies.

That’s what getting Belgium RecyKlaar means.