Turning greenhouse gas into plastic and providing affordable dental care landed these two companies on Fortune's Impact 20
The Fortune Impact 20 is a list of relatively small companies that have built their business models around world-changing ideas, using the profit motive to solve social and environmental problems.
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00:03 There is an access to care problem
00:05 around the country amongst our pediatric population
00:09 in underserved communities.
00:11 We want to give every family, everyone,
00:13 regardless of where they came from, what background, what
00:16 insurance type, the key to access high-end dental care.
00:21 What we have in AirCarbon is a really unique and high
00:24 efficiency solution to help companies
00:26 decarbonize their materials and their supply chains.
00:29 Really proud of the fact that we are in society today.
00:32 If you go into a Shake Shack, you
00:34 can use a straw that is made from greenhouse gas.
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00:41 The Impact 20 is a list of 20 startups,
00:44 usually venture capital backed and/or private equity backed,
00:48 that are pursuing business models that
00:50 are going to have a positive impact on people and the planet.
00:54 Some of them are working in safe tech and tech for good,
00:57 coming up with apps or programs or AI that
01:00 can solve a social problem.
01:02 Some of them are in education.
01:04 Some are working on the climate change issue.
01:07 They're trying to figure out ways to help other businesses
01:09 or help consumers reduce their carbon footprint.
01:14 What New Light does is it turns greenhouse gas
01:16 into a material called AirCarbon that we're
01:19 using to help companies decarbonize
01:22 by taking greenhouse gas and putting it
01:24 into people's supply chain as a replacement for plastic.
01:27 Some of our partners include Shake Shack and Sony and Disney.
01:31 We've got a partnership with Sumitomo
01:33 in the automotive space.
01:34 We've got a partnership with Nike in the fashion space.
01:36 We've delivered over 100 million units into the market.
01:38 And so we're really just getting started,
01:40 but we're also now finally at a full commercial scale.
01:45 So the way the process works is it's
01:46 very similar to what happens in the ocean every day.
01:48 We feed greenhouse gas to microorganisms in a salt water
01:52 solution.
01:52 And those microorganisms consume the gas
01:56 and use it to grow and make a material inside their cells
01:59 called PHB, we call it AirCarbon.
02:01 We push those cells through a high pressure filter
02:03 that effectively separates the AirCarbon
02:05 from the rest of the microorganism biomass.
02:08 That turns into a fine white powder,
02:10 and then we melt that fine white powder into pellets.
02:13 Once we have the pellets, we can use them
02:14 in pretty much any plastic processing equipment
02:17 out in the market today.
02:18 The startup space is where you find often
02:23 sort of the freshest ideas and the most experimental, novel
02:27 approaches to solving social problems.
02:29 Our Change the World list, which runs
02:31 at a different time of year, focuses a little bit more
02:33 on bigger companies that have already figured out
02:36 how to make change in a big way.
02:38 The way we see it is that the companies on the Impact 20
02:41 may be coming up with the ideas that
02:43 are going to be big 10 or 15 years down the line.
02:46 So we're trying to introduce readers to them
02:48 while they're new and young.
02:53 We are a large group multidisciplinary dental
02:56 practice and DSO.
02:58 We have 44 locations throughout three states--
03:01 Texas, Arizona, and Colorado.
03:04 You could be in a major metropolitan city like Houston,
03:07 and you might say, well, there's a dentist
03:09 on every corner here, right?
03:11 But as you get into the nuance of the different insurance
03:14 types and what's accepted amongst the different
03:17 practices, where the specialists are,
03:19 if you need specific surgery for your child or relative,
03:23 you may not be able to get in and see a doctor within three,
03:27 six month, nine month period.
03:29 And so where do these patients go?
03:31 We have an access to care problem around the country.
03:35 Our goal is to go in and to try to solve that as much as we
03:37 can.
03:38 You can get all the services under one roof.
03:41 So today we have pediatric dentistry, oral surgery,
03:44 general anesthesia services, endodontics, even prosthodontics
03:48 all built in to the service model.
03:52 I think working in an environment where you can
03:55 utilize the group practice model, I can utilize supplies.
04:00 I can buy at higher purchasing amounts.
04:03 I can share the space.
04:04 So a typical chair that may not be occupied,
04:07 maybe on one morning, I can now bring in another service.
04:10 Team members are cross-trained across the different specialty
04:14 lines.
04:16 People drive miles away to come see us just
04:19 to maintain affordability.
04:21 It's something we think about every day
04:22 because that's what drives the mission.
04:24 And we have to be really smart to make sure
04:26 that stays at the forefront.
04:27 There are tons of companies out there
04:29 that are striving to have a positive social and
04:32 environmental impact.
04:33 We really wanted to focus with the Fortune Impact
04:35 20 on the best of the best.
04:37 The most exciting thing about the Impact 20
04:39 is getting to see imagination and creativity at work
04:42 in these relatively new companies.
04:44 Very often, they're attacking a very familiar problem
04:47 in a very fresh and novel way.
04:50 And to see the potential in that,
04:52 to see where it's already getting traction,
04:53 and to imagine what it could be one year or five years or 10
04:57 years down the road, that's really thrilling.
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