Tom Szaky wants to be the rag-and-bone man to the world, collecting the  rubbish no one else wants – cigarette butts, razors, expired pills and  plastic food wrappers – and turning an enormous profit by finding new uses  for it. His US-based company TerraCycle already has rubbish collecting and re­cycling  operations in six countries and expects to launch in 11 more (including  Japan, Australia and Sweden) in the next year. He launched TerraCycle in  Britain last September and in Ireland this month. 'We’re just a $40 million company at the moment,’ he says. But he plans to  become the Google of garbage. 'A billion-dollar company doesn’t seem that  big… why not!’

The winner of the activity, run in partnership with upcycling company TerraCycle, will win a trip to New York and see their design become a reality.

The one issue remaining was that most councils are unable to recycle our pouches. That’s why we were really excited when we came across Terracycle. Terracycle’s upcycling brigades are massive in the US but Ella’s Kitchen is only the second company to run a programme with Terracycle here in the UK following Kenco’s launch last year.

In traditional Terracycle fashion, people will be encouraged to form groups known as volunteer brigades to collect packaging and send them to a centralized processing facility, while the company will also collect materials from the brands' factories.