Michael Markesbery took $10,000 from an astronaut scholarship and a material NASA uses to insulate spacecraft, and spent a decade figuring out how to make it bend. Now Solarcore® sells that trick to boot brands, the Air Force, and battery makers.
Planet Protector Group is an Australian climate-materials company that turns waste wool and recycled fibre into circular insulation. Its flagship WOOLPACK product replaces polystyrene in cold-chain packaging for food, wine and pharmaceuticals, while a newer building-insulation line extends the same wool, denim and recycled-poly technology into construction. Founded in 2016 by Joanne Howarth, the company has diverted thousands of tonnes of waste wool from landfill, eliminated millions of polystyrene boxes and returned millions in new revenue to sheep farmers across Oceania.