Eight million metric tons of plastic waste ends up in the ocean every year, including in Haiti where it litters the beaches and causes sanitation issues. A social entrepreneur from Executives Without Borders partnered with Haiti Recycling to streamline processes, increase efficiency, and sustainably monetize the collecting and recycling of plastic waste through a new organization, Ramase Lajan. When oil prices tanked and the recycling centers struggled to maintain a profit, social enterprise Thread stepped in to take up the plastic, turning it into fabric to make socially responsible goods for sale.

Many argue that the Burning Man festival has become an exclusive and wasteful indulgence for the wealthy - an opinion that was exacerbated this year when thousands of perfectly good bicycles were left among the debris in the desert. But a few enterprising individuals and organizations saw an opportunity to aid the victims of hurricanes Irma and Maria by rescuing, fixing, and transporting the abandoned bikes to communities where many people had lost all other forms of transportation, stifling their recovery efforts. Now hope is being restored for some, two wheels at a time.

To the two social entrepreneurs who founded nonprofit Feedback, the massive amounts of food waste being tossed into landfills in the UK and USA each year was a mounting challenge that required a creative solution. So they founded Toast Ale, a craft brewing company that not only reduced food waste by using unwanted bread from bakeries to brew their ales, but helps bring awareness to the issue through the brand, which is growing in popularity.

Renovating and furnishing a home can be hugely expensive. Homeowners who are renovating on a budget, and want to do so in a way that is evironmentally friendly, can find recycled luxury kitchens and other lightly used fixtures at stores like Green Demolitions.

When global oil prices drop, so do incentives to recycle plastic materials, and even more plastic debris and trash ends up collecting in our oceans and ecosystem. An alternative solution in the form of "up-cycling" is helping to combat plastic pollution, as nonprofits and do-gooders who gather beach and ocean trash partner up with companies and retailers to produce desirable products crafted from materials collected out of the oceans.