Guess How Many Phone Cases Are Born on Earth Each Year?

Guess how many phone cases are born on Earth each year?

The answer is, over a billion.

Now, guess how much of that is properly recycled?

Unfortunately, less than 1%.

This is also the situation of most plastics on Earth. Due to the lack of utilization value, they eventually end up as single-use waste scattered around. Despite being a relatively recent invention, plastics will persist on Earth for millennia, from the highest peaks to the deepest oceans. They've become ubiquitous, polluting even the most remote corners of our planet.

You may be familiar with RHINOSHIELD as a phone accessory company, but we are now also dedicated to developing "plastic management solutions." The starting point is simple. If we treat plastic as a valuable "resource" like gold and metal, cherish, manage and utilize it, then plastic waste can be greatly reduced. After all, in the world of materials, we haven't found a material that can replace plastic, which combines lightweight, toughness, and multiple functions.

Born out of materials science labs in Cambridge, RHINOSHIELD has categorized the plastic crisis into three phases and developed corresponding solutions.

"Legacy Plastic™" refers to the plastic waste that has already been scattered around and is difficult to recycle or remove. Just like zombies, they cannot be reborn, cannot be decomposed, and even produce toxins in the environment. For example, marine waste, which we often hear about, is releasing microplastics day by day, harming the ecosystem we rely on.

RHINOSHIELD is currently developing a marine waste filtration platform, which is expected to be publicly available after testing in 2025. By collecting and cleaning up these marine legacy plastics, we prevent them from continuing to harm nature. In addition, we use upcycled marine plastics to create lanyards, watch straps and other products.

The second type of plastic is "Modern Plastic™", which is the plastic product we are currently using. If we continue to treat these resources as we did in the past, without proper management, they will one day become piles of mountains and drown the sea as legacy plastics.

Therefore, before modern plastics become waste, it is key to consider the life cycle of each plastic product and establish a complete recycling system. Therefore, RHINOSHIELD has spent ten years building a complete RHINO LOOP circular ecosystem. Starting from the source, we insist on using “mono material design" and "circular material technology" for product engineering. While maintaining functionality, we also ensure that it can be completely recycled and reused at the end of its life, without wasting a single bit of material, in order to achieve the sustainable goal of zero waste.

The third type is "Future Plastic", with the goal of creating a material that can be 100% biodegraded under natural conditions while maintaining the functions of plastic. Because many current bioplastics made from mixed corn and sugarcane starch, although they look like natural materials, still need to be decomposed in a strict industrial composting environment (above 60°C, under specific bacterial conditions, and takes over 60 days) to truly decompose. We are now also cooperating with multinational laboratories to develop future plastics and continue to push the boundaries of materials science.

To repair the massive damage that humans have done to nature, it cannot be accomplished overnight. But we believe that starting from ourselves, breaking the existing conventions, and putting the blue planet we coexist with at the forefront of all considerations, change can happen step by step.