From material innovation to ocean waste management, CircularBlue™ brings design and technology together to explore new possibilities.
11-10-2026
Reading time: 3 min
Organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and Seoul Design Foundation, the Seoul Design Award recognizes design approaches to sustainability and social challenges. In 2026, it received 1,204 entries from 91 countries, highlighting ideas that go beyond aesthetics to address real-world issues.
What if design could go beyond protecting our products—and help rethink how we address marine waste?
RHINOSHIELD’s CircularBlue™ Ocean Initiative received the ESG Design Impact Award at the Seoul Design Award 2026, joining award recipients including Hyundai Motor Company, Patagonia, Samsonite and OpenAI.
The recognition acknowledges CircularBlue™’s design vision and experimental approach, reflecting RHINOSHIELD’s ambition to extend its expertise in material science and circular design into new areas of environmental exploration.
Innovation rarely follows an easy path.
At RHINOSHIELD, challenging conventions means more than advancing materials and product design. It means asking how our experience can inspire new approaches to challenges beyond our industry.
That challenger mindset inspired CircularBlue™.
Its first experimental prototype, ChangeMaker, integrates solar power, AI-enabled drones and automated waste-collection technology to investigate how environmental monitoring, waste identification and collection could work together.
From concept to field testing, the team continues to test, learn and refine the technologies, assessing their feasibility in real-world conditions and gathering insights for future material recovery and circular reuse.
ChangeMaker is more than a prototype. It embodies the courage to keep questioning, testing and exploring—even when the path forward is uncertain.
The Seoul Design Award 2026 ceremony took place at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP). The RHINOSHIELD team received the award from the Mayor of Seoul and presented CircularBlue™ to the international design community.
The team also joined an international design forum, exchanging perspectives with designers and sustainability practitioners worldwide. Deputy Representative Kuo Chiu-wen of the Taipei Mission in Korea attended the ceremony and congratulated the team.
CircularBlue™ was also featured at Seoul Design Week 2026, showcasing RHINOSHIELD’s design approach and cross-disciplinary experimentation.
For RHINOSHIELD, this recognition is not a finish line, but motivation to keep exploring.
From protecting everyday devices to investigating marine waste challenges, the journey is about more than expanding design’s applications. It is about rethinking how we approach problems.
We believe meaningful innovation takes persistence, experimentation and the willingness to adapt.
The courage to challenge. The commitment to experiment.
Building on our foundations in material science, RHINOSHIELD will continue bringing together design, technology and cross-disciplinary collaboration—because every step toward change begins with the willingness to try.
