Heineken® Beverages has demonstrated bold sustainability leadership through its Returnable Star Bottle campaign, an ambitious drive to encourage consumers to return their 650ml bottles and be rewarded instantly. Designed to remove friction from participation while delivering real environmental impact, the campaign recorded over 1.45 million entries and incentivised the return of more than four million bottles across South Africa.
To enable this at scale, Heineken partnered with digital specialists Techsys Digital, who engineered a seamless WhatsApp-based platform to power the initiative.
Consumers simply scanned a QR code on returnable bottle bins, submitted a photo and location pin of their return via WhatsApp, and instantly spun a digital wheel to win an instant prize – all in under a minute, without downloading an app or filling out a form.
“Driving sustainability is part of Heineken’s DNA,” said Bhavna Mistry, marketing manager Heineken Brand. “With this campaign, we set out to not only reduce waste but to reward positive consumer behaviour, and thanks to our collaboration with Techsys Digital, we achieved this at national scale, with measurable impact.”
Techsys Digital built the WhatsApp ecosystem to handle mass participation with no human moderation, incorporating live gamification, anti-fraud systems, real-time prize allocation and opt-in prompts for brand communication – all within the chat interface.
“This project was about more than scale, it was about proving that tech can drive behaviour change. We’re incredibly proud of what we achieved with Heineken,” said Neil Hutchinson, sales director at Techsys Digital. “We created a powerful engagement platform that turned everyday actions into meaningful impact – all through mobile-led innovation.”
The Returnable Star Bottle campaign is a standout example of how major brands can pair meaningful purpose with digital innovation. Through the combination of Heineken’s sustainability vision and Techsys Digital’s WhatsApp expertise, the campaign has set a new benchmark for scalable, tech-driven consumer engagement.
