Member Highlight: East Penn Manufacturing Launches Power2Recycle Campaign

Fostering Industry Collaboration

“We were inspired by industry associations like ABR, BCI (Battery Council International) and ILA (International Lead Association), and all they’ve done in support of the industry to promote products that have a high rate of recyclability and are sustainable,” said Joel Brady, assistant vice president of marketing at East Penn. “It encouraged us to take a look here at East Penn and think about what we can do to amplify those messages and those efforts.”

Initiatives Driving Power2Recycle Engagement and Outreach

East Penn began the campaign in late 2023 with a Power2Recycle video on YouTube and quickly followed up with the creation of a dedicated web page at EastPennManufacturing.com/Power2Recycle. Both were shared and promoted on the company’s social media channels repeatedly over the next few months.

The initial goal of Power2Recycle was to reach at least a million people with the message that each of us has a crucial role to play in the circular economy of lead batteries. In its first few months of promotion, East Penn estimates the campaign has already reached more than 1.5 million people.

The company also issued a series of three press releases about the campaign to local, national and trade media, helping to increase awareness of lead battery recycling more broadly.

Strong Local Awareness and Community Response

The awareness campaign is already having an impact locally. After seeing stories in the hometown paper, the Reading Eagle, and on television station WFMZ, customers are bringing lead batteries to the East Penn factory sales store for recycling for the first time.

East Penn continues to build on the campaign with content they hope will help consumers sift through all the noise and confusing claims about conservation and environmental issues. Ultimately, they want consumers to see themselves in the story, understand their vital role in the process and feel empowered to make sustainable choices.

Sustainability in Product Design

East Penn’s full line of transportation batteries was recently validated by Underwriter’s Laboratory (UL) with an allocation of 98% recycled content, the world’s highest UL Recycled Content Validation for batteries. This milestone underscores East Penn’s commitment to environmental responsibility and showcases a groundbreaking step towards creating batteries with an exceptionally high level of recycled materials.

Employee Engagement and the Introduction of ManuCycling™

“The other thing that we did was we made sure that we communicated these objectives and accomplishments to our employees, because as much as we hope our employees understand the important role that they play in manufacturing it and its ties to recycling,” said Brady, “we didn’t want to take that for granted. So, we developed messages specifically for our employees that we put out through our employee app and have had over 8,000 employees engage with it.”

As part of its messaging to employees, East Penn coined the term ManuCycling™ to mean a completely integrated manufacturing and recycling process. A video on the Power2Recycle website helps explain the importance of this closed-loop system to efficiently turn old batteries into new.