If you're unmarried, roommates handily replace spouses as someone you complain about to your friends at the bar. Wouldn't it be nice if your roomies were actually decent people you could build something with?

In 2000, Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan were roommates in San Francisco whose separate work experiences enabled a fortuitous synergy. Says Lowry, environmental scientist and chemical engineer:

...I was living in a bachelor pad in San Francisco with five friends from university, one of whom was Method's co-founder, Eric Ryan. Eric had a background in branding and marketing and he recognised that one of the sectors in greatest need for a complete branding overhaul was the cleaning products space. At the same time, I knew from my work that from an environmental perspective these were some of the most pernicious products available. We started the business from that flat in San Francisco in early 2000, originally going door-to-door to local retailers with the products.... We now have 100 staff and our annual turnover is $100m.

Method is one of the few home- and personal-care companies that keeps their eyes equally on four different sides of a product: price, quality, environmental impact and design (most of you will remember Karim Rashid's Method bottles). In his interview with Business Green, Lowry explains why "green firms cannot afford to neglect design and performance when developing new products."