Call2recycle – Customer Store

Customer Story

Call2Recycle expands battery recycling programs using Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

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If you’ve ever recycled a battery in the United States or Canada, chances are high that it went to Call2Recycle. As the largest battery recycling program in both countries, the non-for-profit organization collects many types of single-use and rechargeable batteries at more than 16,000 sites. The nonprofit has recycled 140 million pounds of batteries so far, recovering valuable materials such as cobalt, nickel, and iron, which can be used to manufacture new products like dishware and new batteries.

Call2Recycle works on behalf of stakeholders to provide its no-cost battery and cellphone recycling program to consumers through convenient drop-off locations, including retailers and local communities. Industry stewards and major product and battery manufacturers across the globe voluntarily fund the company’s programs to ensure that the batteries and cellphones that they introduce into the marketplace are being responsibly recycled when they reach their end of life.

Call2Recycle began in 1994 and has seen its business – and the industry – change dramatically since then. What started as a small project has grown into a multimillion-dollar nonprofit organization as battery use has rapidly expanded to power tools, and home generators, and more recently e-bikes and cars. 

Managing core operations with Dynamics 365

To effectively support its sustainability mission, the organization needed a unified ERP and CRM tool to tightly manage and track all aspects of its operations. Call2Recycle’s previous platform could not keep up with the change in pace for recycling of these newer batteries and to meet the challenges of the present and the future, they invested in a new platform that could grow and manage the challenges at scale.

Call2Recycle worked with EFOQUS, an expert in deploying Dynamics 365 solutions. They initially went live by combining Dynamics 365 Business Central as the ERP solution to manage and automate customer billing, and Dynamics 365 Sales to manage its end-to-end sales processes. All employees now use Dynamics 365 across operations, finance, services and sales, and more. These include customer support who track customer history, operations management who oversee fulfillment and materials collection, regional program managers who oversee their leads, and senior leadership who monitors dashboards for organizational health.

The organization saw immediate benefits over its previous ERP system. As David Ainsley, Director of IT at Call2Recycle explains, “By automating processes in Business Central, we save 10 hours per month on invoicing, 8 hours on banking activities like vendor payment uploads, and 12 hours on processing vendor invoice approvals.” The organization also saves approximately $25,000 in annual fees, licenses, and hardware support.

Supporting e-bike battery recycling with Power Pages

Another benefit of Dynamics 365 has been its seamless integration with Power Platform. This has enabled Call2Recycle to rapidly expand the system to take advantage of new market opportunities. Take its e-bike program, for example. To successfully launch the program, Call2Recycle not only needed a system that could be deployed quickly but could also support e-bike retailers through the entire e-bike battery recycling process – from enrollment to training to ongoing program support, including battery collection kits. 

Rather than updating its existing APS.net website to accommodate the program, EFOQUS recommended development of a low-code site using Power Pages. This provided built-in integration with their Dynamics 365 Sales system and also made it easy to extend their order and shipment processes within Dynamics 365 Business Central. With this integrated low-code approach, the team was able to go from concept to a live working external site in under four months. 

Here’s how the system works: e-bike retailers enroll in Call2Recycle’s e-bike battery recycling program on the Power Pages site. After enrollment, employees at a retailer complete online training to determine when a battery reaches end-of-life packaging or damaged/defective packaging. Results of the training are sent from a third-party training application (Litmos) to the company’s Dynamic’s 365 system using Azure Functions triggered by Power Automate flows. 

Upon completion of online training, another flow is activated which automatically triggers shipment of an end-of-life recycling kit to the e-bike retailer. The retailer can also use the Power Pages site to check training and order status, order additional collection kits, schedule shipments of e-bike batteries, and order promotional materials to help educate riders at the time of purchase. 

Meanwhile, Call2Recycle’s employees can monitor activity through a Power BI dashboard which surfaces training history data from Dynamics 365 Sales. They can also track batteries collected from customers and shipped by retailers based on data coming into Dynamics 365 Central. As Leo Raudys, Chief Executive Officer at Call2Recycle explains, “To manage our work with hundreds of corporate customers and municipalities at scale requires a sophisticated self-service system, and that’s going to be all the truer the bigger we get. Now, instead of asking a colleague for the status of collection site sign-ups for the E-bike program, I can go straight to our Power BI dashboard.”

The E-Bike Program was launched in March of 2022, with 26 brands signed on as stewards and over 600 consumer-facing collection sites (bike shops) registered through the Power Pages site. As of February 2024, the program has grown to 56 brands and over 2,000 fully trained bike shops participating as collection sites. Over 70,000 pounds of e-bike batteries have been collected and recycled so far. This represents enough battery material to make 10,000 new e-bike batteries, or over 600,000 cellphone batteries.

Innovating for new opportunities

Call2Recyle continues to build on its integrated Dynamics 365 and Power Platform system. 

In Canada, Call2Recyle uses the system to manage its new smart containers for batteries. These containers can monitor and transmit data such as container fill levels and temperature (which might indicate a hazardous battery). The data gets displayed in Power BI through a series of Azure Functions. Certain data alerts (such as a full container) will trigger a Power Automate flow which creates a service request in Dynamics Sales. The request can be fulfilled by a service vendor on site through a Power Pages portal on their mobile device. 

Call2Recycle has also launched a new venture called GreenTraxEV focused on recycling batteries for electric vehicles (EVs). The GreenTraxEV platform secures safe travel for EV batteries to qualified recyclers, repurposers, or repair facilities to efficiently scale and automate various battery-related processes. “Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform has enabled us to streamline the scheduling, routing, and logistics for EV battery management,” says Raudys.

Once again, the speed and flexibility of the system plays a crucial role in the success of the program. “We’re seeing a massive expansion in our scope, which we couldn’t have managed without Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Using a system that can be modified quickly and easily to meet these new demands is critical to our growth,” concludes Raudys.

By automating processes in Business Central, we save 10 hours per month on invoicing, 8 hours on banking activities like vendor payment uploads, and 12 hours on processing vendor invoice approvals.

— Leo Raudys: Chief Executive Officer (Call2Recycle)