InsiderBusiness

Thin-plastic food wrappers make up half the garbage floating in our oceans, but they’re difficult to recycle. One company has invented a way to replace these plastics with seaweed. Now, it stands as a finalist for Tom Ford’s Plastic Innovation Prize worth more than $1 million.

Single-origin specialty coffee can cost over $30 per pound, more than five times the average price of 1 pound of ground coffee in the US. “Specialty” is the term for the highest-quality coffee, and aficionados describe its taste with words more frequently used by sommeliers, like “floral” or “fruity.” Reaching this level of quality requires investment and labor at every step of production. But despite the prices a roasted bag of single-origin coffee can reach in the world’s wealthiest countries, the farmers who handpick each coffee cherry struggle to earn a profit. We went to Kenya to find out what it takes to grow high-quality coffee, and why it’s so expensive.

A company shreds, melts, and molds a secret mixture of hard-to-recycle plastics to make solid bricks and beams. The building materials are cheaper and faster to assemble than most traditional ones. The system has helped increase waste collectors' income and address a shortage of school buildings in Ivory Coast.

Li-Lac Chocolates is Manhattan’s oldest chocolate shop, having survived decades of change in New York City. Since Li-Lac opened in 1923, owners have stuck to the founder’s original chocolate recipes while adding new confections along the way. Today, Li-Lac makes its legendary fudge, butter crunch, and truffles, as well as over 1,000 specialty molds for occasions like Easter and Thanksgiving. The company has six locations in New York City, with all of its ingredients made inside its Brooklyn factory.