A Memphis resident’s innovative way of picking up trash has amassed a large social media following across platforms.
Glenn Morris, originally from central Texas, is a full-time engineer who has shared his Litter Buggies project across platforms to show users how easy picking up trash can be. In his Facebook group, Litter Buggies, Morris shared that on January 1st alone he picked up 30 gallons of trash near Beale Street.
Morris explained that Litter Buggies are remote-controlled (RC) cars that make picking up trash more efficiently.
The idea originally came as a way to knock down sandcastles. However, when he went down to the beach in Texas and saw there were no sandcastles to knock down, he and his wife decided to add trailers to the back of the cars and pick up trash on the beach.
The Flyer spoke with Morris to learn more about Litter Buggies and how they have positively impacted the community.
*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Memphis Flyer: How did the idea of picking up trash around Memphis come to mind?
Glenn Morris: I’m working from home here, just like I was down in Galveston. You’re working from home all day, you’re indoors all day, and it’s good exercise. It’s miles and miles.
My problem is that I can’t seem to get a hold of anyone, whoever does the garbage stuff. I’ve been trying to get a hold of somebody to arrange something that I can stick on the side of the bags because I have no way to move the bags. If I go three to four miles, I have to leave the bags in locations and I need to get a hold of someone to put something on the bags to say, ‘Hey, y’all need to pick this up when you pick up trash. This guy is not leaving this stuff here. It’s all litter from around the community.’
Could you talk us through the process of designing and building your robots? What challenges did you face during development?
The issues down there [Texas] are different from here obviously. Down there you need stuff to be able to survive that saltwater environment — the salty air, the salt on the beaches, and everything else. When you’re picking up stuff that has fluids in it, you don’t want it leaking down the electronics and causing other failure points. You have to make them where the bearings are stainless steel and they have complete housings over them.
Down there you have barrels, every 50 feet or so. They don’t actually need to carry that much at one time. Up here, we don’t have that, unless you’re walking Downtown. There’s no trash cans anywhere, and up here we need to carry a lot of trash. At the time we’re doing like 40 gallon bags until we get them filled up, and then drop it and get the next one in.
You mentioned that you don’t get paid for this, so what motivates you to dedicate your time and effort to this?
For me it’s the design challenges involved with it. Every time I go out I look for issues with them to try to make the systems better. Then I make the videos to show people how much easier this thing makes it, even though the rigs are expensive. There’s no way to make them cheaply where they last. They’re decently expensive, and 90 percent of that cost is in the RC car itself. I make all those videos, one because turns out people seem to like it for some reason. I don’t know, they find it relaxing. But, more importantly, it shows how easy being able to pick this stuff up, put it in there is. You’re not carrying around with you. Because carrying a bucket for three or four miles, people aren’t going to do that.
Community organized pick-ups are always a lot of people, in a small, defined area picking up everything they can. Whereas the stuff I’m doing is a single individual, or sometimes multiples depending if the wife wants to go with me or other people have the systems, it’s a few people covering a lot of distance picking up primarily the plastics, the styrofoams, and stuff like that. The cardboard is more or less biodegradable. That’s not as big of a concern as picking up the plastics and whatnot.
How have Memphians responded to the Litter Buggies and what type of impact have you observed so far?
A lot of positive feedback from the Reddit page. I’m getting ready to build the next version of these systems here this week. The only way I can do that is through donations from Redditors who have said, ‘Thanks for what you’re doing. I’d like to donate a little bit of money to help do it.’ I took that money and I was able to buy the next RC car to build the next version of it. The better version than what you normally see in those videos.
