When Maine-based founder Alexa McGovern gave birth to her daughter in 2023, she was alarmed to realize that, thanks to microplastics found in placentas and breastmilk, her newborn would be meeting plastics before she met her mother. Eight-months later, when McGovern was diagnosed at age 29 with breast cancer, despite no genetic predisposition, she was launched on an all-out quest to try to combat the dirge of plastics.

Enter: Dirigo Sea Farm. McGovern and her small team are turning kelp farmed in Maine and from international sources into a plastic replacement — one that can be used for laundry and dish detergent pods.

“Seaweed loves water,” said McGovern, and if it could be turned into a water soluble film to wrap around other liquids like detergents, “it just kind of made, like logical, non-sciencey sense.”

“And then when we started looking at it from a science perspective, that checked out, too.”

Right now, roughly 70 percent of the dissolvable plastic that encases most commercially available detergent pods ends up making its way back into the environment after going through wastewater treatment facilities, McGovern said.

“We’re eliminating that microplastic pollution in a product that is super convenient, and people love to use.”

Americans love the concept ofrecycling — we’re just not very good at it.

We leave food on containers, or take wild guesses about what’s actually recyclable. We toss hoses, toys, and all those coffee cups with plastic liners into our green bins. Our intent may be good, but recycling plants simply can’t process these items. Industry experts call our actions: Wishcycling.

That’s whereIan Goodine’s company, rStream, comes in, with an AI-based solutionfor venues, universities, airports, and commercial facilities. It’s a robotic sorting system that can separate trash from recycling from compost with at least 90 percent accuracy, compared with the 30 to 50 percent benchmark that rStream’s research has found is what humans achieve.

Recycling can get really granular. Some waste haulers might only accept plastics or cardboard with a small percentage of their surface area contaminated with food, for instance. (Tip: A little grease on the pizza box is generally OK for recycling, but not too much.) That’s hard for the naked eye to judge, but easier for AI, he said.

“At the end of the day, the recycling companies do not want that contamination, because it makes their commodities that they sell in the back end worth less, and it increases the cost to process those commodities,” Goodine said.

The prototype right now looks like an 18-foot horse trailer, but over the next year they’ll be building the next generation of it — a commercially released iteration that should be ready by May 1.

Jack Duffy-Protentis likes to say that he was born a car guy who can’t drive — obsessed with engines and going fast, but because he was born legally blind, unable to get behind the wheel.

While he can’t drive a car, he did find safe ways to operate a jet ski, and it was his love of zipping around lakes that led him to create the eSki, a battery-electric jet ski that takes fossils fuels, and the planet-warming emissions that come with that, out of the activity he loves.

Duffy-Protentis started work on the prototype concept as an engineering student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute using a golf cart motor and Nissan Leaf batteries. He’s since developed it at Greentown Labs in Somerville, and is raising money for the first 250 jet skis that he plans to produce.

His jet skis, more expensive to buy but touted as longer-lasting, are “meant to get you into the environment, get you enjoying nature” while not polluting the air or lakes, said Duffy-Protentis.

About a decade ago, when General Mills swapped the food dye used in Trix cereal for a natural alternative, the response was swift.

“Even though they changed nothing else but the dyes, consumers kept saying it was bland and stale,” said Christa Campbell, cofounder of Mirra, a natural food dye company. “They[General Mills] took a massive revenue hit.”

The problem, Campbell said, is that most natural food dyes don’t result in the same vibrant colors as the artificial stuff, which is often derived from petroleum or minerals such as titanium dioxide, often mined from coastal areas.

Campbell’s company, recent winners of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s Climatetech Studio Showcase, offers a natural food dye that uses physics to get the same vibrancy that consumers are accustomed to, she said.

“We’re actually using plant proteins and creating structures out of them to reflect the light in a way that produces color instead of absorbing like traditional dyes,” Campbell said. “It’s all about refracting the light.”

By the second quarter of 2026, Mirra will be starting partnerships with food brands and manufacturers, Campbell said.

Somerville-based Lasso (formerly known as Tender Food) is trying to do something different in the plant-based food market, spinning plant protein fibers into meat alternatives that resemble structured cuts of meat, rather than the plant-based “ground beef” popularized by companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.

Plant-based foods are better for the planet. Livestock production accounts for up to 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and, according to research out of Stanford University, nearly a third of global methane, a more potent but shorter-lasting greenhouse gas that largely comes from dairy and cattle farms.

Lasso’s beef short ribs, shredded pork or chicken, and chicken slab are manufactured in Rhode Island and are already on offer at restaurants in Massachusetts and New York.

The machines used to make the “meat” spin and weave fibers like cotton candy, but use less energy than a toaster oven, according to the company.

Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com.