It is estimated by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish.[gallery orderby="title"]

From cigarette buts to flip-flops, Tom Szaky of TerraCycle believes everything can be recyclable. In Tom Szaky’s vision of the new economy, nothing is garbage. Not cigarette butts. Not dirty diapers. Not even used tampons.

In Tom Szaky’s vision of the new economy, nothing is garbage. Not cigarette butts. Not dirty diapers. Not even used tampons.

At the moment, there are 165 million tons of plastic in our oceans. If something doesn’t change, there will be more plastic than fish by weight in the oceans by 2050. The use of plastics has skyrocketed in the past 50 years, and this trend is likely to continue because it is in nearly all the products we consume. If the strong growth for plastics doesn’t subside, the plastics sector will account for 20 percent of total global oil consumption. Sadly, sea life and birds are dying from eating or becoming tangled in this debris.

Baisse des émissions de gaz à effet de serre, préservation des matières premières, création d’emplois… Les bénéfices de l’économie circulaire sont évidents, ce qui pousse de plus en plus de citoyens engagés, de startupers mais aussi de grands groupes à s’engager dans une telle démarche. Présentation des acteurs font de l’économie circulaire une alternative pour le futur.

TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky shows a shampoo bottle made with recycled plastic collected from beaches and oceans. (Phil Gregory/WHYY) The United Nations has recognized a Trenton-based recycling company for creating a shampoo bottle that’s made with plastic waste collected from beaches and waterways. TerraCycle chief executive officer Tom Szaky said 25 percent of the world’s plastic ends up in oceans, rivers, and lakes.

Oak Brook, Ill. — Lightweighting and growing use of recycled content increase the need to tightly control the PET blow molding process, consultant Mike Urquhart said.

P&G partnered with TerraCycle to create the Fairy Ocean Plastic bottle, which is made from 90 percent post-consumer recycled plastic and 10 percent ocean plastic.

Tom Szaky, the Hungarian-born CEO and founder of TerraCycle, dreams of chewing gum, cigarette butts and ocean plastic. His Trenton, New Jersey-based company aims to accelerate the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, a breakthrough in materials science, energy storage and other technologies, by cleaning up after heaps of waste and inventing inputs for items spurned by ordinary recyclers.