van werven

strategic advice for a recycling revolution

For every recycled kilogram of plastic, Van Werven Recycling Plastics reduces CO2 emissions by 2.5 kilograms. 

When the pioneering firm expanded its Belgian production line in 2018, our team helped get the recycling revolution underway with strategic advice.

Van Werven is at the forefront of hard plastics recycling: the originally Dutch family firm is the only one in the sector that has succeeded in returning 95% of used plastics to basic raw materials. When it expanded its production line in Lanaken, this pioneering firm looked to us for strategic advice and to organise a stakeholders’ event.

Our team worked out a clear positioning for this recycling firm. This strategic exercise resulted in a clear vision statement that the company can use as a guideline when communicating with the media, government, the sustainability sector, companies, end users, and so on.

‘We want to close the loop in a local context: we organise the entire recycling process in Belgium and sell new raw materials exclusively in Europe’– Peter Brughmans, Purchase Consultant

We took care of the press communication for the opening of the new washing and grinding line in Lanaken. We guided Van Werven in generating a creative concept, and took care of the communication both during and after the stakeholder event. The news about the expansion was framed in a political context: we cleverly alluded to Belgium’s ambitious environmental policy, with more effectively separated waste processing as a top priority.

Van Werven’s story was picked up both online and offline by publications including De Standaard, Het Belang van Limburg and Het Laatste Nieuws, as well as by Radio 2 and Kanaal Z, in trade journals and on specialist websites such as Susanova and Milieugids. In 2019, Van Werven aims to double its production in Lanaken to 30 million kilograms of recycled plastics. The company will therefore be saving the planet no less than 75 million kilograms of CO2.

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