Andrew Cooper and Alex Schulze

Andrew Cooper and Alex Schulze are two surfers who grew up on the Florida coast. A few years ago, they saved up their money for the trip of a lifetime to Bali, only to discover beaches covered in plastic. When they asked a local lifeguard why the otherwise beautiful shoreline wasn’t kept clean, they were told it had been cleaned hours earlier. The trash they were wading through had only just washed ashore.

Most people either ignore the plastic crisis or complain about it on Facebook. A few though, roll up their sleeves. The two friends decided to start an ocean cleanup company called 4ocean. They didn't have any startup capital, so they decided to fund it by selling bracelets, and promising to remove a pound of trash for each one sold. They then used proceeds to employ cleanup crews in Florida, Guatemala, Haiti and Indonesia.

Since 2017, they've pulled almost 5 million kilograms of trash out of the ocean.