Stephanie Tobor founded Green Apple Supply in 2010 in an effort to “level the playing field” when it comes to the prices associated with healthy, greener alternatives to everyday household products. The online marketplace allows visitors to learn about eco-friendly school and office supplies, arts and crafts items, household items, toys and more and then purchase them directly — all in an effort to help consumers around the world choose the right environmental options.

“When I thought about ‘how are we going to change the world?’, to me, it comes down to economics,” Tobor explains. “If you make it inexpensive, people will buy it. If you can turn that economy of scale onto the green side, then our work is done.”

Gabriella Levine‘s interests in technology intersecting with art, environmentalism and never-ending creativity have fueled her building of hardware kits or robots that explore the environment and collect data, all in an effort to better interact with our surroundings. Levine mixed her physical computing talents with a passion for biological motion in hardware in collaboration with Protei on a fleet of autonomous sailboat drones built to absorb oil near oil spill sites.

“My goal is to make the tools that I make reach people,” Levine says, “[and] allow them to work hands on and really find meaning in exploring the environment and communicating with other people using creative technologies.”

Central Florida-based Genesis Water Technologies is the leading manufacturer and wholesale distributor for innovative water solutions in the U.S. Nick Nicholas, Genesis’ Technical Sales Manager, has helped facilitate the company’s growth to offices on three continents by teaching the importance of advancing technologies in water filtration, water treatment, reverse osmosis and greywater and backwater treatment, desalination systems and more.

“The challenges of sustainable water technologies are going to continue,” Nicholas confesses. “The cost of water rates are going to increase [and] scarcity is going to become an issue. We are moving forward with our sustainable approach to meeting those needs. We look forward to changing the status quo.”

A few years back, entrepreneur Mark Bowles was in between startups when he read that only 3% of mobile phones were being recycled. An idea hit him instantly: Make recycling convenient and immediately incentivized, and more people would participate. ecoATM was born, and the incentive in this case, instant cash, has consumers getting paid for old mobile phones, digital music players and tablets while out for groceries or shopping at the local mall.

“Everybody wants a clean planet,” Bowles says. “But, we all have different thresholds of when we will respond. I wanted to lower that threshold and put [ecoATM] in your normal weekly path. You’ll see it over and over, and when you have phones and you want to get rid of them, we’re right there.”