Circularity on the road

Satellic and WAAK join hands to recycle units

Satellic, a Belgian company based in Diegem has been the main toll operator in Belgium since 2014. In less than two years, they designed, built and financed the entire road pricing system for trucks over 3.5 tonnes and N1 BC vehicles.

Today, Satellic has installed more than 600,000 On Board Units (OBU) in trucks from more than 100 different countries. All these units also mean a lot of materials. That is why at Satellic they started working on recycling mechanisms for the OBUs from day one. A partner was sought and soon the company ended up with WAAK.

WAAK employs people who, because of a physical or mental disability, have a distance to the regular labour market where it is difficult or impossible for them to find work. Their social mission? Social entrepreneurship with attention to the environment, welfare, health and equal opportunities.

Every year, tens of thousands of defective OBUs end up at WAAK. A permanent team of employees there now keeps some 100,000 OBUs in top condition every year. This allows these devices to be reused repeatedly by truck drivers driving on Belgian roads. A strong partnership based on a shared vision of sustainability.

The cooperating partners are therefore strongly committed to making users of the systems aware of the importance of returning the OBUs in their entirety, and therefore chooses to fully refund the deposit of the OBUs upon return.