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How a Weed From Bangladesh Became a Plastic That Refuses to Cost More
Most green materials ask you to pay more and change everything. Applied Bioplastics bet the opposite - that plant-based plastic only wins if it drops into the machines factories already own, at a price they already pay.
Zack Schmitz
Zack Schmitz is the co-founder and CEO of Public Grid, a renewable-energy platform that lets apartment renters switch to 100% clean electricity through their existing utility account at no added cost. A former Deloitte consultant with an MIT master's spanning electrical engineering and human-centered design, he built Public Grid (formerly Cottage Energy) to attack the unglamorous middle of the energy market: the roughly 20 million U.S. renters in deregulated states who never get a say in where their power comes from. The platform brokers clean energy in bulk, splits the savings, and follows residents from address to address.
Steven Jepeal
Steven Jepeal is the co-founder and CEO of Allium Engineering, a Massachusetts deeptech startup making bridges last 100 years instead of 30. An MIT nuclear-engineering PhD who once worked on fusion reactor materials, Jepeal pivoted from the physics of plasma to the unglamorous economics of rebar, inventing a way to clad ordinary steel reinforcing bar in a thin layer of stainless so it stops rusting. The trick: the process slots into existing steel mills without changing how they operate. Allium's clad rebar is already in bridges in California and Florida, and Jepeal was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Manufacturing & Industry.