History

Pick’n Run is trying to make picking up trash fun and easier for people to pick up trash in their local environment while also encouraging people to run (or walk) — i.e. to stay fit.  It is an initiative that was started and is lead by the father-son duo: John and Martin Mueller.  The idea came about after John and Martin would continually find various small trash items during their runs in through the neighborhoods and parks in Kentucky and Michigan. Not liking the fact that man-made trash was accumulating either intentionally or accidentally in their neighborhood and in places they frequented, they started to find ways to pick up the trash during their runs.  However, there were many cases where they couldn’t pick up all the trash they saw during their runs due to the limited carrying capacity of their hands; nor were they able to document where they found trash and how their efforts were cleaning up the routes they ran.  Thus, they got the idea of making a backpack for runners and walkers to store the trash they found during their exercise, and to build a software application that could make it easy and fun to keep track of their cleanup efforts.  They could throw the trash away when they returned home.  More information about John and Martin can found here.