Neha Jain’s professional journey has been quite a ride. From being a student of journalism, she went on to dabble with a career in Google and then found a start-up. Today, she is at the helm of Zerocircle — which crafts bio-soluble packaging from seaweed and has been in the news for bagging the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize. Valued at $1.2 million (comprising a cash component and direct investment) the global competition was launched by designer Tom Ford in collaboration with non-profit Lonely Whale in 2020. It aims at finding companies who ‘source and scale marine-safe and biologically degradable alternatives to traditional thin-film plastic made from fossil fuels’. In addition to Zerocircle, which bagged second place, Sway (which came first), and Notpla (at third place), also work towards recycling seaweed in the US and UK respectively.
Taking us through the journey, Neha says it began in 2020 when her need to “not have plastic in the house” gave birth to Zerocircle. ”I realised that however hard I tried, effectively reducing one’s carbon footprint would need way more than just individual conscious consumer choices. As I researched more I learned that the products we end up using in our daily lives end up polluting our planet. Even those which were labelled ‘sustainable’ and ‘green’ weren’t really that,” says Neha.
