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!’

When I first meet Szaky, 28, at the launch of TerraCycle’s pop-up store in the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan, he is proudly showing off some of the 200 products that carry the TerraCycle logo.

These products, made using some of the waste TerraCycle collects, include backpacks created from Capri Sun juice pouches, folders covered in coffee refill bags, and kites made out of biscuit packets. In signature TerraCycle style, no money has been spent on the store’s decor. The tables are made of salvaged doors, propped up on old fire extinguishers or the company’s new plastic rubbish bins.