Companies to Watch: New York Startups Shaping a More Sustainable Future

Since we took note of the climate threats facing our city and country last Earth Day, things have, frankly, remained just as dire. But reversing some of the most severe impacts is still doable, and tech is stepping up to lead the charge. 

This month alone, New York introduced new playbooks to drastically reduce carbon emissions in high-rise buildings; announced plans to quadruple its electric bus fleet by the end of the year; and released sweeping plans to protect Lower Manhattan from the impacts of coastal storms and rising sea levels. Those efforts by public officials are being met by a growing ecosystem of climate and greentech startups building their tools here, and a partnership between government and industry will be key to NYC proving itself as both a local and global leader in sustainability.

In honor of Earth Month — and all the ways we can support a more sustainable, resilient New York — here’s our list of NYC startups building technology-forward solutions for transforming transit, fashion, your everyday household products, and more.

What does your company do?
Gravity founder and CEO Moshe Cohen: Gravity is a sustainable mobility and EV infrastructure startup accelerating the transition to clean cities. We manufacture the equipment, develop the software, and host the sites that onboard True Fast EV charging within densely populated cities, while lowering overall energy costs. We also operate our own fleet of advanced EV yellow taxis with proprietary licensable technology here in New York, making it seamless for private and for-hire fleets to transition to zero-emission vehicles.

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
MC: New York has been home since 2009 when I moved here from Cambridge, MA to become a professor at Columbia. Living here gave me a very different perspective on the future of urban EV charging and energy management than the other big players in the industry, which all come out of suburban California. I realized no one was solving the big challenges we were facing here, and that was the reason Gravity embarked on our own path of innovation.
This is also just such an iconic place. New York has the most iconic fleet – the yellow taxi – and some of the most iconic buildings in the world. New York has always been a gateway to the country, and innovation that happens here has some of the greatest potential to be shared everywhere.

You founded Gravity a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. Did that change your strategy for launching the company — or force you to pivot your roadmap?
MC: As long as you are flexible, constraints can greatly accelerate innovation. There were many months in 2020 prior to the founding of Gravity, Inc. where we witnessed transportation coming to a complete halt, and we took that opportunity to reimagine a different, better, and greener future of transportation with zero emission vehicles, beginning with the very established yellow taxi brand.

The pandemic also shook existing supply chains. We built in almost paranoid redundancies in suppliers of all our components, especially when it came to geographical diversity. Now we have a broad network all over the world supporting us, and we’ve become nimble and able to solve supply-chain problems that large established companies will likely struggle with for years to come.

We have also seen an explosion in the transition to electric vehicles, which has catapulted demand for our products and services and spurred all kinds of innovation. We wanted to meet the moment without waiting for others to innovate, so we pioneered a whole new approach – everything from manufacturing our own equipment to redesigning the way EV charging interfaces with a building’s energy use. And I’m glad we did, because now we have a unique value proposition: we can use the shift to electric vehicles to solve existing energy problems in the grid, relieve drivers of ever having to worry about where to charge their vehicles again, and help buildings everywhere add charging while saving on their utility bill.

We obviously still have a long way to go when it comes to EV adoption: In NYC, fewer than 1% of vehicles are electric. What can city officials be doing to accelerate the share of cars on city streets that are electric?
MC: Sometimes it takes longer than expected for change to happen, but when it finally does, it comes at a rapid clip. I think that will prove true about EV infrastructure. The challenge is that not all charging is equal – far from it. Gravity’s equipment is 50-times faster than the conventional chargers most in use today, even though ours doesn’t take up any more space. But government incentives make no such distinction. In fact, fast chargers like ours are at a severe disadvantage, with incentives covering a much smaller fraction of the cost than with less useful and increasingly obsolete slow chargers. The public sector shouldn’t be so agnostic as to how its funds are spent. It’s hard to rationalize investing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in any equipment that takes 8 or 10 hours to charge a car, when faster equipment is capable of doing it in a few minutes. When innovation is happening rapidly, policymakers should focus on where technology is headed, not where it was a decade ago.

If we’re going to put a lot of effort into expanding EV use, that means we also have to build out the charging infrastructure to support them. How do you create more charging spaces in a place as dense as NYC?
MC: It’s simple: we turn parking spaces into charging spaces. We want EV drivers to be able to access charging wherever they park, knowing that when they get back to their car it will always be charged. The industry’s assumed model has been to bring cars to charging — to facilities that look like gas stations. But who actually likes going to a gas station, let alone waiting for hours at one to charge? Gravity’s focus is bringing charging to wherever cars already are, with an initial focus on residential and commercial buildings with big parking garages.

What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?
MC: I’d like to change the paradigm of EV charging in urban areas. We have a huge pipeline and tremendous interest in our solutions, but I hope that when we open our first true fast charging hub in Midtown this year it will revolutionize how folks in the private and public sector think about charging in cities. I hope that when they visit our sites and see the massive benefit and energy savings, they will stop the wasteful bleeding of funds into level 2 charging and fake fast charging, paving the way for NYC to leapfrog into its rightful position of leadership in EV infrastructure and mobility.

Okay, four rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
MC: This has to go to my friend Eytan Sugarman’s Made in New York Pizza with a brand-new location in the West Village. Pizza is as New York City as yellow taxis!

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
MC: It’s great to have in person meetings after years of virtual. I like to support places that have weathered the pandemic, and Fabrique Bakery just downstairs from our office has fantastic coffee and treats. It’s great to grab a pastry and sit in one of the plazas nearby when I host clients.

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?
MC: I’m a big fan of working while in transit and using that time as productively as possible. No scrolling Twitter or browsing news — I use that time for work. I’m always working multiple screens when I’m in the back of a car, or taking virtual meetings while I walk.

What’s one sustainability choice every New Yorkers should make a habit before Earth Month ends?
MC: Commit to never buying a conventional fuel vehicle ever again!

What does your company do?
Hydronomy co-founder and CEO Brittany Kendrick: Hydronomy is building technology to revolutionize the way we source, purify, and access clean drinking water. Our devices are on-site, off-grid, lead free, and solar-powered solutions for households to generate the purest water they can taste directly from the air.

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
BK: New York has an energetically charged culture that fuels, tests, and if you're lucky, protects innovative thought and creation. The things of our imagination are fully vetted here, so it is only right to see our wild patent pending device idea being built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, tested in various pilot locations statewide, and hopefully valued here first.

For people living in NYC, where does their water actually come from? Are the systems we have now bad for the environment?
BK: NYC residents receive unfiltered water from the Croton & Catskill/Delaware watershed. A watershed is like a series of water-filled tributary channels of creeks and rivers that eventually drain and get collected at a uniting downstream point. That water is then conveyed through pipelines — some lead leaching — by gravity and/or pumps from water mains to your home’s faucet.

Because NYC drinking water is not filtered, it is imperative that the state watershed is protected from debris, littering, pharmaceutical, and environmental offenders that can compromise water supply pipelines that are already troubled and underfunded.

How is the Hydronomy system alleviating those issues? How does it serve neighborhoods in dense urban places like NYC, where water delivery/plumbing systems are complicated?
BK: Hydronomy’s technology is a decentralized, sustainable water solution. Our device utilizes solar energy to create clean drinking water from the air. The water generated by our system is captured, purified, and deposited directly into a single family household existing hot water tank. Because it seamlessly integrates into a household's existing plumbing infrastructure, homeowners can avoid use of community tap water systems — 11,000 of which are known to be in violation of the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act.

Without surprise, most of the underperforming community water systems are servicing the most vulnerable communities in urban cities. Underserved communities, which are typically communities of color, lack the resources to self-remediate poor public water utility. Hydronomy intends to partner with local water authorities and utilities in order to provide households with individualized Hydronomy units for clean drinking. Our water supply will replace lead contaminated utilities during times of service disruption, boil water advisories, and perpetual poor water quality conditions.

While our current technology is capable of servicing single-family homes, we anticipate expanding the technology to service multi-units residential buildings and commercial locations.

You’re part of Newlab and NYCEDC’s inaugural Founder Fellowship cohort (congrats!). How are you planning to use your time in the program to grow your business?
BK: We are so excited — no more building prototypes in my dad’s garage! The fellowship has provided the critical opportunity for our team to construct and assemble our go-to market device entirely at Newlab. The prototyping metal, wood, 3-D printing, and electronics shops allow our teams of scientists and engineers to conduct in-house manufacturing and develop final tech specifications for both our Hydrator and AirWell product lines.

The Hydrator is an off grid water hydration station, good for outdoor parks and recreational spaces that enable end users to dispense drinking water into their refillable water bottles on site. The Airwell product line is intended to be coupled with plumbing infrastructure that has an external water storage capability. AirWell water is generated, purified, but then deposited into nearby water storage reservoirs outside of the device.

We are currently having on-going conversations with securing pilot sites (parks, festivals, subsidized housing, and more) that will enable system deployment, system performance data collection, and brand awareness. Exciting, hard stuff we are doing right now.

What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?
BK: Completion of five Hydrators and five AirWells, ready for pilot program deployment.

Okay, four rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
BK: Patsy’s Pizzeria — love a wood-fired pizza.

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
BK: Fish Cheeks — the lunch and dinner menus be banging.

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?
BK: Make elaborate gourmet lunches and snacks at home when you hit a productivity rut, and go to the gym when you need inspiration — our bodies prove that we can do magical things.

What’s one sustainability tip every New Yorkers should make a habit before Earth Month ends?
BK: Carry a refillable water bottle and reusable tote bag everywhere we go. We gotta eliminate our plastic use ASAP!

What does your company do?
Generation Conscious founder and CEO Greg “GL” Genco: Generation Conscious is a personal care and cleaning product refill company that believes ecological health, hygiene security, and environmental equity are critically linked. Our mission is to provide equitable access to sustainable and regenerative products that consider the future vitality of health, water, air, and fellow humans.

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
GG: I grew up near a waste transfer station in Jamaica, Queens before moving to Long Island with my Trinidadian-Italian family. Seeing the health impacts of the waste station on my community motivated me to start Generation Conscious. We must radically alter the infrastructure of the world’s greatest city to close the loop on fast moving consumer goods by making refilling more convenient, affordable, and accessible than shopping in store or online.

By utilizing ecosystemic design principles to build zero waste infrastructures, we aim to help everyday New Yorkers reimagine the culture of New York City into one that has greater concern for well-being: well-being towards the environment and how much waste we produce, well-being of economically vulnerable citizens and communities — and most importantly, become a culture that acts on their concerns, generating an equitable and healthy world for all life.

The “conscious” makes sense, but who’s the “generation” in Generation Conscious? Are you currently marketing your products to young people? How do you think your customer base will evolve?
GG: Generation Conscious is designed, marketed, and priced for anyone at any age that seeks to create sustained change by radically rejecting the systems perpetuating racial and economic injustice; — carbon, plastic, water-waste and pollution — and replacing these infrastructures and their consequences with systems that generate true sustainability, equity, and accessibility!

Starting this fall, we will be transforming the infrastructure of new channels across the United States of America. Subscribe and stay tuned.

A lot of people think of eco-friendly versions of their everyday household products as more expensive. How are you ensuring sustainable options also remain accessible/affordable?
GG: A lot of people don’t think eco-friendly versions are more expensive — they are. Eco-conscious behaviors and products are typically not as accessible to lower income communities and persons, often requiring higher levels of financial investment. Examples of sustainable designs and products like central heating/cooling systems, electric vehicles, organic produce and products, installing solar panels require additional income, since they are often sold at a higher price point, perpetuating eco-classism and making it inaccessible to participate in climate solutions without high levels of capital.

We’ve made our designs and products specifically to combat this eco-classism, creating products well-below the price point of other sustainable brands and products. Every refill of our detergent sheets are 15-20 percent cheaper than leading mass market equivalents on subscription from Amazon.

Generation Conscious has detergent sheets and toothpaste tablets available now. What’s next for your product roadmap?
GG: We listen to our customers with respect to the needs of our ecological systems. Our next product will be a multi-functional sheet and it will be dispensed through the refill station.

And what about in one year? What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?
GG: We hope to serve every homeless shelter in NYC by 1H’23. Everyone deserves access to hygiene security that is zero waste, non-toxic, allergen free and hypoallergenic.

Okay, four rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
GG: Williamsburg Pizza.

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
GG: For lunch, Cheeky Sandwiches in the Lower East Side. The absolute best. 5 Stars. For coffee, Bittersweet in Ft. Greene.

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?
GG: Meditate, then the Pomodoro Technique; cuddle my American Staffordshire Terrier Kai; Beethoven radio; and a quad espresso.

What’s one sustainability tip every New Yorkers should make a habit before Earth Month ends?
GG: Compost, compost, compost! Organic food waste emits Methane emissions that are 25 times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

What does your company do?

Make It Black founder and CEO Amanda Grogan: Make It Black is developing the first close-loop garment overdye technology — blackout color technology and advanced sustainable remanufacturing — that transforms pre- and post-consumer garment waste into black clothing indistinguishable from new virgin black in both aesthetics and performance. Make It Black gives second life to categories of waste that are not currently being addressed: unsellable or unwanted colors, prints and stains by transforming garments into fashion's favorite shade, black.

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
AG: It’s the fashion capital of the US — it’s exciting, it's vibrant and it's forward thinking. I’m from Dublin Ireland and came to New York ten years ago to work as a fashion designer after university. I stayed because New York attracts such a diverse mix of culture, art and design. It’s a perfect place to start a business, and the startup community here is also so supportive. We’re based out of Newlab which is an incredible space in Brooklyn that houses and incubates companies applying transformative technology to things that matter.

In the past few years, we’ve seen those pretty shocking photos of mountains of clothes piled up in landfills. But should we be recycling those clothes, or reselling them, or reusing them, or …? Do you think there’s an education gap in what you can/can’t do with clothing?
AG: 100%, there's an education gap. But from fast fashion brands to consumers, it's a purposeful gap. Fast fashion brands don’t want consumers to know the truth — to know enough to be able to call out their greenwashing.

Reusing clothing that you already own and re-styling them is the most sustainable thing you can do. But for you to be able to reuse your clothing many times, you need to buy for quality and durability from the start. Buy quality clothing made to last, from brands that pay their workers a living wage, and that you can see yourself wearing in years to come. If you can wear your clothing for even an extra nine months, it reduces its environmental impact 20 to 30 percent. You can also extend the life of clothes by reselling them on platforms like Poshmark or Vestiaire Collective.

There’s also a huge education gap around donated clothing. I had the “feel good factor” when donating clothes thinking they were going to someone in need, but I started to map the supply chain of donated clothing and was shocked to learn only 10 percent of the clothing the Global North donates to charities are sold in the country it was donated in. The other 90 percent enters the for-profit global secondhand clothing trade. The US is the largest exporter of used clothing in the world — we’re essentially exporting a problem. But also a huge business opportunity if we invest in the right technologies.

The idea of Make It Black came to me when I had a stained white t-shirt and thought, “If I donate this, no one would want to wear my old stained t-shirt.” It felt disrespectful. The other option was to trash it. Recycling it — essentially shredding it and breaking it down — should be the last option. Less than 1 percent of clothing currently gets recycled back into clothing, and even this 1 percent is downcycled to the fiber level. So I was thinking, “How could I keep wearing this t-shirt?” Make It Black was the answer.

Why is a dye service the more climate-friendly solution? And why black?
AG: We keep garments as garments — at their highest value — a core aim of the circular economy. We create new revenue streams for brands from their existing waste and, importantly, decouple financial growth for brands from new garment production. Currently clothing waste is being downgraded, landfilled. or incinerated, and our technology allows us to keep clothing at its highest value, and It allows brands to keep garments at full-price in first-tier retail, out of unwanted secondary markets, to keep control of inventory.

We focus on black, as it accounts for approximately 30 percent of sales in the apparel industry, making it the most popular color. Black has the potential to saturate and cover varying colors, patterns, stains or defects, transforming into as-new solid black. Also black is trend-resistant and respects the design DNA of brands making the barrier to adoption low.

If you got the heads of all the major fashion brands around one conference room table, what’s the most important change you’d suggest in their manufacturing lines?
AG: It would be to address circularity as part of the design process — not as an afterthought. Decisions a designer makes influences the garment's ability to be circular. Waiting for circular or recycling infrastructures to advance to scales needed to accommodate the masses of waste the industry is producing is not the answer. Brands need to partner and invest in these technologies and think long-term. But circuraty alone won’t get us to meet commitments to limit carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. Brands simply need to reduce their new garment production. There are less than 8 billion people on the planet and brands are currently producing 150 billion garments every year. A child could understand that math doesn’t make sense for the planet.

What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?
AG: We’re focusing on combinations of polyester and cotton fiber content, which is 86 percent of the textile industry. By the end of 2022 we’re pushing to have a fully automated system integrating auto- fiber identification, machine learning and auto-sorting. We’re aiming to not just have our business model be circular to assist the transition to circular economy, but all of our processes circular, hyper-efficient and ready for scaled pilots.

Okay, four rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
AG: Speedy Romeo is my favorite Brooklyn spot. But I do wish they had ketchup on the table — I’m a big fan of Heinz ketchup with Pizza (don’t judge me). I’m a condiments connoisseur.

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
AG: Variety in Greenpoint — it’s great for some early morning work.

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?
AG: Get up early, and do the things that require analytical thinking or heavy writing first. For writing, I use the Be Focused app: It tracks your workflow in timed increments and makes you take breaks. I like this structure of alloting tasks by time, then nothing feels too intimidating

What’s one sustainability tip every New Yorker should make a habit before Earth Month ends?
AG: Buy less, and by quality. And spend ten minutes watching a short video series “Dead White Man’s Clothes.” You’ll see the story of what’s currently happening to our clothing when it’s not sold or when you donate it — directly from the people who are dealing with it in Kantamanto Market in Ghana, one of the largest second hand clothing markets in the world. It’s truly eye-opening and will make you re-examine how you shop.

What does your company do?
Air Company co-founder and CEO Gregory Constantine: Air Company's goal is to provide a viable solution for tackling climate change by repurposing carbon emissions and converting them into products of value. We invented a Carbon Conversion Reactor that transforms CO2 into impurity-free, carbon-negative alcohols. We then use these alcohols as the base of both consumer and commercial goods, from vodka and fragrance to R&D for industry applications. Our mission is to utilize as much carbon dioxide as possible while preventing additional carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.

A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
GC: New York has always been an international hub for innovation and forward-thinking. Here, we’re able to work with the most talented scientists and researchers while developing strategic relationships with key players in the tech, consumer goods, and climate solutions spaces from around the world.

How big is the carbon problem exactly? If you had to explain to an everyday New Yorker how much carbon is in the atmosphere and what it’s making the planet worse off, what would you tell them?
GC: It’s a massive problem. Carbon dioxide emissions are at their highest levels in 23 million years, caused by an increase in anthropogenic carbon emissions and a lack of efficiency of natural carbon sinks — such as the ocean and forests — to sequester carbon. In order to address climate change, there’s a critical need to remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as possible, while also transitioning to renewable electricity and phasing out the use of fossil fuels.

Air Company made its debut in 2019 turning carbon dioxide into vodka. What other products have you been working on since then, and what dreams do you have for the product roadmap of the future?
GC: Air Vodka is our proof of concept for our technology and the hero product that we use to demonstrate how pure of a product our process creates. Since 2019, we’ve expanded our product portfolio to include Air Spray Hand Sanitizer and Air Eau de Parfum, the world’s first fragrance made from CO2. At Air Company, we’re constantly focusing our efforts on R&D to optimize our technology and expand into other applicable verticals. As such, you can anticipate more product and business announcements coming from us this year.

You closed a venture round a few months before COVID-19 hit New York, but just last week, closed a $30 million Series A. Did the pandemic change your fundraising strategy or make it more challenging?
GC: The funding process, in general, is always a challenging yet rewarding one. The pandemic added a layer of complexity to it that changed how we engage with partners.

What’s one top growth goal you hope to achieve by the end of 2022?
GC: This year, we’re focusing on scaling our capacity, both technologically and geographically, while also continuing to educate our consumers on climate change and carbon technologies through our products and commercial applications. Not long from now, we’ll be opening a new facility with greater production capabilities, which will ultimately help us meet consumer demand while transitioning into industrial sectors.

Okay, four rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
GC: Artichoke Basille’s Pizza.

What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting?
GC: Devoción Coffee.

What’s your favorite remote work or productivity hack?
GC: For productivity, ssing the new Do Not Disturb function on the iPhone.

What’s one sustainability tip every New Yorkers should make a habit before Earth Month ends?
GC: Use a reusable water bottle and a coffee cup.