The Clean Up Mekong campaign directly connects Hanwha brand with the local residents around the Mekong River. The objective of the campaign is to solve the floating trash problem and raise Hanwha’s brand awareness by encouraging people to participate directly in the campaign. To achieve this, we decided to make the world’s first trash collecting boat powered exclusively by solar energy as a brave invention.

Since World-Environment-Day 2019, we have been executing a direct campaign with the Hanwha Solar Boat so that people experience the campaign firsthand and get the direct benefit of solar technology in their daily lives.

Globally, 88%~95% of the marine debris comes from the 10 rivers of Asia and Africa. The Mekong River is a transboundary river originating from China, passing through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and finally through Vietnam to the sea.

Since Vietnam is located at the lower end of the Mekong River, trash from countries located upstream flow down and merge with waste from Vietnam. As a result, Vietnam has more floating trash. Furthermore, if the pollutants are not stopped, it flows into the Pacific Ocean, causing severe consequences.

While the pollution of the Mekong River is getting worse every day, 320 million people still obtain living water, agricultural water, and food resources from the river. The pollution of the Mekong River threatens the health and survival of those people.

Hanwha, as a company that operates under the brand core value of a "sustainable future", could not let the essential river die.

We built a specialized Hanwha Solar Boat which can collect floating waste from the Mekong River using only solar energy. The exclusively solar-powered Hanwha Solar Boat is able to compile trash without emitting any pollutants. No matter how much trash is removed from the river, if the device uses fossil-fuels, emits harmful gas, and leaks oil into the ocean, it is harmful to the environment and therefore is a paradoxical design.

For the most impactful execution of the Clean Up Mekong campaign, discovering the most effective location for stopping debris from flowing into the Pacific Ocean was crucial. Collaborating with the Vietnam Environment Administration(VEA), Global Green Growth Institute(GGGI), and local government facilities of Vietnam, we concluded that the best location for the campaign was Vinh Long Province, which is located just before where the Mekong River merged with the sea.

Despite being the world no. 1 company in solar-cell production, Hanwha lacked in familiarity with consumers because its business is B2B-oriented. Furthermore, solar-energy is not widely used in Southeast Asia. To directly approach consumers and change their behavior, we developed a campaign to clean the Mekong River, which is linked intimately with Vietnamese daily life. Among numerous environmental issues, we recognized the urgency of resolving the Mekong River's pollution as a part of marine pollution. We planned The Clean Up Mekong campaign with Hanwha’s photovoltaic technologies to promote the advantages of solar-energy and raise environmental awareness. We also encouraged locals to correct their wrong behaviors such as throwing trash into the river.

Since the problem is neither limited to one village nor one corporation, we needed an impressive guerrilla event for attracting attention globally from numerous people and media. Therefore, we planned a guerrilla event on World Environment Day 2019.

1) August 2018~May 2019: Solar Boat design/production/trial

A total 6.45mX2.3mX2.6m boat is built with high-performance Hanwha Q CELLS' Q.PEAK DUO solar system and unique conveyor device. Such specs allow it to navigate the Mekong River and collect waste automatically with solar energy.

2) January 2019~present: Solar Boat Character (Solar Hero) Development and Execution of digital campaigns on Facebook and YouTube

Raising environmental awareness is essential to eradicate the fundamental cause. To amicably approach people throughout the campaign, we developed a character called “Solar Hero”, a character that saves the Mekong River by using solar energy.

3) World Environment Day: The guerrilla event held place in Vinh Long, Vietnam. Locals joined the event and helped Solar Boat by collecting trash at the shore.

4) June 2019~present: Since two solar boats were donated on the World Environment Day, the boats have been collecting waste, raising environmental awareness and Hanwha brand value.

-Since World-Environment-Day-2019, Solar Boat has been collecting 500kg of trash daily to clean the Mekong River. As a result, residents who have directly experienced advantages of solar-technology are raising brand-awareness and Hanwha value. Moreover, residents who dumped trash unconsciously into the river corrected their behavior.

-This campaign achieved 48million Impressions, 18million views, and more than 5million-engagement, and catalyzed debates on the environment and renewable solar-energy.

-Brand-awareness increased significantly as this campaign has been introduced in the-2020-Davos-World-Economic-Forum, the-8th-International-Renewable-Energy-Conference, the-20th-World-Knowledge-Forum, 2019&2020-Cannes-LionsXSustainable-Development-Goals-Forum, and more than 130 media-platforms worldwide as a feasible solution to the global-environmental-problem. Particularly, the-Davos-World-Economic-Forum is attended by global-leaders who direct climate-action and energy-related policymaking. Through the forum, Hanwha enabled administrators to experience Hanwha's sustainability-management-philosophy and attitude towards environmental challenges.

-Along with this campaign, Hanwha is contributing to increase the usage of clean energy in Vietnam with the solar solution business, and after the campaign, this business recorded 91%-annual-sales-increase in Vietnam.