Litter pickup, verified and paid per piece
Our mission is to make picking up litter convenient, fun and rewarding, so the land and water we share get cleaner every day. Litter Gig, LLC is a Maryland company founded by Kyle Hughes and based in Damascus, in Montgomery County. We built a marketplace where property owners pay only for litter that video proves was picked up and thrown away, and where anyone can earn something for cleaning a public space.
Litter is still everywhere, and removing it is getting more expensive
Keep America Beautiful's 2026 National Litter Study counts about 35 billion pieces of litter on U.S. roadways, waterways and coasts, roughly 2,200 items per mile of roadway, even after a 34% decline since 2020. Direct cleanup costs at least $11.5 billion a year, most of it paid by businesses, and state transportation departments report their litter costs rising by a third or more in a few years. Commercial properties pay $35 to $50 an hour for lot litter service while the person doing the picking earns a fraction of that. The gap is management, transport and work that nobody can verify.
Close the gap with software instead of supervisors
A property owner draws a boundary on a map and funds a balance. A local worker records the cleanup on a phone mounted to a grabber. Our software counts each piece and checks every pickup against the boundary and the disposal video, and the owner pays one price per verified item. Workers keep their independence and are paid a published piece rate. Public spaces get the same verification at no cost to anyone, rewarded with community rewards and community-service hours.
Water, microplastics and the cheapest place to intercept them
Plastic on the ground breaks down under sun and rain into microplastics that move through storm drains into rivers and drinking-water sources. In April 2026 the EPA placed microplastics on its draft Contaminant Candidate List 6 for the first time; the draft creates no obligations and the final list is expected in November 2026. The cheapest interception point is a piece of litter on a parking lot before it reaches a storm drain, which is where Litter Gig works.
Documented results
Stormwater and litter-reduction programs increasingly ask for documented outcomes. Every Litter Gig pickup is a GPS-stamped, video-verified record, so a sponsor, school or municipality can report exactly what was removed and where.
A working platform, built lean
An Android app, an iOS app and a web portal with owner, admin and merchant dashboards, built in-house and running for under $50 a month before scale. Paid sessions are verified in the cloud and public cleanups on our own hardware at no API cost. Settlement is deterministic server-side code: it places every counted item on the GPS trace, grades it against the property boundary and pays only after disposal is verified on video.
Measured, not promised
Our counting was 96% accurate at the item level for paid sessions, on human-counted test clips, and 9 of 10 test clips were counted within tolerance. We publish what the pilot measures, and we label anything not yet built as planned.
Low-barrier work for people who need it
A phone, a grabber and a bag are the whole toolkit, and the work pays per piece, so anyone can start the same day without an interview, a schedule or a vehicle. We recruit through workforce, re-entry and community outreach organizations, shelters and outreach missions, as well as campuses and neighborhood groups.
The app is designed so a first session is a Green tutorial that anyone can start the same day. Gold work is paid per verified item at a published rate, with no promise of any amount of work or earnings; during the pilot, Gold earnings are tracked in the wallet and cash withdrawals open with the public launch. Either way, the work is making your own neighborhood cleaner.
Where we are and where we are going
Litter Gig is running a pilot in Montgomery County, Maryland, with a public launch planned for the first quarter of 2027 once live payments and background checks are in place. The plan is to win one dense county first with retail centers, apartment communities and a parks-department pilot, prove throughput and retention with real numbers, and then expand through the Washington, D.C. metro and along the I-95 corridor.
We say what is built and what is planned. Background checks are planned and open to property owners once our screening partner approves the integration; worker injury coverage is a planned program that activates at scale, and this site is updated as each one ships.
Company profile
Leadership and advisors
Advisors commit about ten hours a week. First hires after the seed round: a community and operations manager (Q2 2027) and a sales lead for property managers and municipalities (Q3 2027).
Kyle Hughes
Founder & CEO
Kyle works on Litter Gig full time. He designed and built the Android app, the iOS app and the web platform himself using AI-assisted development, runs the pilot in Montgomery County, and is the inventor on the provisional patent that covers Litter Gig's verification and settlement method.
Christopher Sloop
Board Member & Technical Advisor
Chris is the CTO of Whisker Labs and an angel investor in Litter Gig. He advises on cloud architecture, data pipelines and AI integration as the platform moves from pilot to public launch.
Jeff Hughes
Board Member & Business Development
Jeff leads outreach to property-management firms, enterprises and municipalities, and represents the company with early partners and pilot sponsors.
Jalen Savoy
Environmental Specialist
Jalen brings hands-on municipal parks litter-program experience. He advises on where litter accumulates, how cleanup results should be measured and reported, and how Litter Gig fits the stormwater and litter-reduction programs that municipalities and property owners already run.
How each of us makes the ground cleaner
Whether you manage property, want flexible paid work, care about your watershed, run a school program, own a shop or back early companies, there is a place for you.
Property owners and municipalities
Retail centers, apartment communities, associations, campuses and parks departments pay one price per verified item instead of paying by the hour, with an itemized video receipt for every session.
Workers
Independent contractors choose where and when to work and are paid a published piece rate for every item the AI verifies. No shifts, no boss, no minimum.
Volunteers and community cleanups
Anyone can clean a park, trail or street, verified on video at no cost to anyone, and earn community rewards for merchant offers and time toward community-service hours.
Schools and service programs
Students' verified cleanup time becomes service-hour certificates that lock to one program category and can be checked online, so hours cannot be claimed twice.
Merchants
Local businesses offer rewards to people who just cleaned their neighborhood, in exchange for foot traffic, and fund their own rewards.
Investors and grant partners
We are raising a $500,000 seed round to close the launch gates and run paid pilots, and we work with nonprofit co-applicants on litter-reduction grants.
"Pay for results, prove every piece, and make cleaning up worth someone's time."
Questions? Email khughes@LitterGig.com or call 240-732-3046.