OUR VISION

Innovating for a Greener Future

Our Ethos

We are a dynamic and forward-thinking team that prides itself on being different. A disruptive manufacturer that aims to deliver solutions that first and foremost prevent pollution. That might sound obvious but there are an awful lot of pollution prevention products on the market that don’t work.

As important to us as performance is customer experience. If pollution prevention products are easy to use, if they don’t make a task more onerous, then they are more likely to be used and this is a significant factor in the implementation of successful, lasting environmental strategies.

Many of our innovative solutions were developed in collaboration with forward-thinking companies before becoming widely adopted as best practice by the construction and utility sectors. Having customers ‘in the room’ during development enables us to test performance and usability in the real world before launch.

If you have a pollution challenge, whatever it is, please get in touch – we’d love to try and solve it.

Green Rhino -The Unstoppable Force in Pollution Prevention

We continue to explore innovative new ways to prevent pollution and adapt our existing products to work with new bio alternative fuels and oils.

However, we’re not just looking at your pollution problems but ours too – namely the sustainability of our operations.
As a company dedicated to pollution prevention, if we aren’t doing everything we can to reduce our own environmental impact, we don’t deserve to be taken seriously.

Our product packaging is recyclable. We’ve reduced landfill waste from our operations to 6%. We seek to use recycled and recyclable materials in our products. We have embarked on the journey to become net zero by 2030.

The planet is in a perilous state. Pollution is driving climate change and the direct degradation of ecosystems. It is imperative that we all do everything we can to reverse this decline before it is too late.

A History of Innovation

The story of Green Rhino starts with smart polymers. Back in 2004, a young entrepreneur called Ross Atkin was shown a ‘magic trick.’ A white powder added to a beaker of oily water instantly solidified the oil so that it could be removed. The water left in the beaker was clean.

You can watch this ‘magic trick’ below.

The white powder was smart polymer and Ross immediately realised the potential for pollution prevention.

By 2009, in collaboration with CI Agent Solutions in America, Ross was installing underground smart polymer membranes on transformer sites for customers including UK Power Networks (UKPN) and Western Power Distribution (WPD).

These turnkey solutions were effective and opened up a period rich with new ideas. Ross built a small team that focused on the development of smart polymer filters which could be ported to the side of a concrete or steel transformer bund. Rainwater could drain freely through the filter and any leaked transformer oil in the flow would be captured. This simple, low-cost and low-maintenance solution was written into the UKPN design standard for transformer bunds.

WPD had another pollution headache. They managed a network of telegraph pole storage sites which were prone to contamination by the wood preserver Creosote, a heady concoction of complex hydrocarbons. The team evolved the smart polymer filters into a plug-and-play site drainage system which was the precursor to today’s DrainEezy Filtration Systems. This could be connected into a site drainage system and the smart polymer filters could be easily swapped out when spent.

After designing a range of sediment and oil dewatering filters for UKPN in 2012, we had a growing range of off-the-shelf pollution prevention products. Ross formed Capture Green Limited and trademarked the brand name Green Rhino.

The development of the dewatering filters had opened up the construction market to Capture Green. At the time, the go-to spill containment products on construction sites were spill trays and nappy-style products. However, users were all too aware that this was a flawed approach. It only took a single drop of oil or fuel and any rainwater collected in the tray became contaminated waste. Not only that, the flooded trays were generally left to overflow.

After conversations with a number of tier one contractors, Capture Green developed  EnviroPad, the first spill pad to use smart polymers. EnviroPad was a true evolution in spill containment and an immediate success.

Today, Green Rhino products are now used on five continents – including Antarctica. In the UK, products like EnviroPad and the EnviroHorn Drain Filter are considered best practice across the construction and utility sectors. Our DrainEezy Bund Filters are factory fitted by transformer manufacturers around the World.

You can read more about our pioneering work with smart polymers here.

Our Journey With Smart Polymers

Green Rhino has pioneered the use of smart polymers in pollution prevention. Smart polymers have a unique property: they transform liquid hydrocarbons into a non-hazardous solid, enabling pollutants like oil and fuel to be neutralised.

But that’s just the start. There are many smart polymers and we’ve spent over a decade perfecting blends for different applications. The solidification process needs to happen quickly and the viscosity of the hydrocarbon is a critical factor. Hydrocarbons like diesel, motor oil, transformer oil and bio products like HVO and FR3 present different challenges.

Developing products that combat a range of hydrocarbons requires an optimized blend of polymers. Sometimes, specific hydrocarbons are best served by separate products as is the case with our range of DrainEezy® Bund Filters for mineral, synthetic and natural ester oils.

Our flagship product, the EnviroPad® spill mat, uses a blend of polymers that is uniquely effective in attracting and retaining a wide range of hydrocarbons including oil, diesel, petrol and hydraulic fluids. EnviroPad is built around our patented Neutroilize™ Smart Fabric Technology which delivers unrivalled performance, capacity and durability. Other methods of manufacture simply don’t perform well enough – we’ve tried and tested them.