Cleaning the world one run at a time
In doing our daily reading and research on what is going in the world of trash / garbage, I ran across a joyful article about garbage collectors in Turkey. They have been collecting books that Turkish citizens had been throwing out. Continue Reading →
For the holidays this year, Martin and I got Pick’n Run shirts as our gifts 🙂
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What causes trash is one of the biggest questions Martin and I continue to try to answer. The second biggest question we think about in terms of trash, or get asked about, is “what is the type of trash do we mostly see see during our runs?”
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I was reading several articles this morning about picking up trash (which is what I do when working on Pick’n run with Martin). There were two articles that caught my attention in regards to two sides of a coin. Continue Reading →
This past week I spent several days in Fresno, California. And when I go to Fresno, I also tend to go up to the mountains. This usually includes visits to the national parks, including Yosemite National Park, and Kings Canyon / Sequoia National Parks. This trip was not different. Continue Reading →
This is fun to see happening at a young age: a 5-year-old designs a birthday party where her and her friends pick up trash. Continue Reading →
When explaining the Pick’n Run concept, one of the first comments we get is that there is too much trash to pick up. When they say this, they are envisioning a landfill amount of trash, which they think they have to pick up.
However, we are not focusing on finding a solution to pick up large piles of trash that you see in the picture above. There are other companies and solutions that will be able to focus on doing that. Rather, we are initially focusing on helping runners pick up the odd trash pieces that you see on your runs, as you see in the picture below (which is trash we have picked up on one of our runs). The plastic cup. The beer bottle.
In addition, we aren’t focusing on the “nasty” trash that is gooey and yucky. For the most part, the cups, the bottles, the candy wrappers are dry (we are developing gloves that people can use to pick up the trash, and put it in a Pick’n run backpack).
A month ago, my daughter (Naya), my sister (Betsy), and I ran the Yosemite Half Marathon. It was the 1st half-marathon for my daughter (she did wonderfully), and the 4th half-marathon for my sister, and my 7th half-marathon. My sister and I had run the Yosemite Half Marathon last year (when it was in October), and we wanted to run it again.
This time, I ran a race for the first time with one of the Pick’n Run backpack prototypes….the first prototype. I have used the prototype on shorter, practice runs, but never in a race and not at the half marathon distance (13.1 miles).
I was able to pick up trash during the race, put it in the backpack, and then easily empty the trash at various trash locations, which tended to be at various mile markers. See pictures below of the race, and the backpack usage.
This past weekend I was at my daughter’s soccer tournament in Davis, California. It is interesting to see volunteers picking up trash during the tournament. I thought it was nice they were doing it, as it definitely made a difference with less human-made trash laying around the soccer fields.
The volunteers from the local soccer club that was hosting the event, and were in pairs. Thus, it wasn’t one person alone picking up the trash.
And come to find out, after talking with the volunteers, their trash pick duty was part of the requires volunteer hours they have to do with the club. So the initiative wasn’t on their own accord. This is interesting as we work on building out the motivation model with PnR and trying to provide less friction and more enjoyment for picking up trash.
Here is an example of combining a tour of an area with picking up trash. It takes place in St. Paul, Minnesota:
To make this happen, individuals from 3 different organizations worked together:
The individuals to picked up litter along two streets:
While picking up trash along these two streets, the individuals learn about the future of a Griggs Street park via an hour long tour. The park will be on 5 acres that the Trust for Public Land recently purchased in the city of St. Paul. The property is near the Skyline Tower housing development, which is home to 500 or more families.
