THE TRASHMAN COMETH
By Chris Wadsworth
Hey, most people have hobbies. Maybe it’s pickleball. Or model trains. Or mountain hiking. Or quilting. Or if you’re Alan Speicher, it’s plogging.
“It’s a conjunction of ‘jogging’ and ‘to pick up’ – only in Swedish,” Speicher explains without really making it any clearer.
So, we’ll intervene – plogging is an activity where recreational runners carry a bag with them and pick up litter and trash as they go. It’s a way to get exercise and do some good for the world – and it literally does come from the Swedish phrase for “to pick up” (plocka upp) combined with the word “jogging.”
And Speicher, who lives in the Belmont Greene neighborhood, is the uncontested master of plogging in Ashburn, in the region, maybe in the whole dang commonwealth. He’s been running since he was a kid growing up near Gaithersburg, Md., and he started picking up trash on his runs about eight years ago. In that time, he’s racked up some pretty impressive stats.
He has plogged all over Ashburn and Loudoun County. He’s also plogged overseas in places such as Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands. His longest plog is the time he took the Metro into Washington and plogged all the way back to Ashburn – about 36 miles.
And then there’s the trash. Using “claspers” or “grabbers” and wearing gloves, Speicher estimates he picks up about 300 pieces of litter on a typical run. And he runs nearly every day. And he keeps count while he’s running. From about 2017 to 2024, he estimates he picked up 437,000 items, including plastic bottles, aluminum cans, catalogs, discarded mail, old boxes, used diapers and VHS tapes.
When you add in his runs from 2025, he says he’s somewhere around a cool half a million pieces of trash picked up and properly disposed of.
“I’ve picked up trash every day for an hour for eight years, but those numbers are so much bigger than I first realized,” Speicher said. “I’d like to get to 3 million pieces. I’d love to pick up one piece of litter for every person in the DMV.”
Why does he do it? Well, there’s the satisfaction of doing something good for the community. There’s also the cold hard cash. Speicher regularly finds dollar bills, five-dollar bills, tens, even twenties that blow across his path or are stuck in brambles on the side of the road.
“I find money every week,” he said. He guesses he’s roughly $1,000 richer from the treasure he’s found plogging.
And then there are the costumes. Speicher has been spotted running and plogging dressed as a banana, the Incredible Hulk, Darth Vader, Chewbacca – the list goes on and on. It’s a mild day when he’s only wearing knee high socks and a Forest Gump beard.
“I enjoy being funny. It’s part of my identity. And you know – going on about the problems facing the environment can be a bit humdrum, so we might as well keep things upbeat and have some fun while trying to fix it.”
When he’s not pounding the pavement, Speicher is a corporate recruiter. He and his wife of nearly 20 years, Kerry, have two kids – son Griffin, 16, and daughter Quinn, 13.
“Sometimes he’ll be running in the neighborhood wearing the crazy costumes and I’m sure our teens find it a little cringeworthy,” Kerry Speicher said. “Everyone knows him.”
Oh, and there’s one more thing you need to know about Alan Speicher. He founded a club. A plogging club. Right here in Ashburn. Back in 2018, he created The Trash Pick-Up Club of Ashburn – TPC Ashburn for short.
And each year since, the club has held an annual 5K plogging run/walk – complete with a finish line arch made out of abandoned cardboard boxes. It’s not a competitive race. Rather dozens of friends, family and fellow ploggers come out and run or walk the W&OD Trail and other trouble spots around Ashburn picking up trash. Each run has netted anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 pieces of litter.
Felix Tanh is a runner who lives in the Belmont Country Club neighborhood. He’s participated in Speicher’s plogging run at least five times and says it’s always rewarding.
“It’s very interesting. You kind of learn where trash goes and how it flows with rainwater and ends up in forested areas,” Tanh said. “You think a place like Ashburn looks pristine, but there’s a lot of trash out there.”
At the end of the run, the group brings the bags of trash they’ve collected through the cardboard arch, and they are presented “medals” – handmade by Speicher out of even more cardboard.
“A lot of folks bring their kids, and this teaches them the value of picking up trash and knowing where litter might be hiding,” Tanh said. “They get in the habit of keeping their neighborhood clean so it’s a nice event to do together as a family.”
Speicher says he could give the usual platitudes about wanting to make the world a better place for his kids – but he says he also does it for himself. He wants a cleaner world while he’s still here to enjoy it.
He also says he doesn’t want to get to the end of his life and look back and realize he had only taken and not given.
“That’s not how I want to feel about myself,” Speicher said. “It just feels good to pick up litter. It’s not a controversial thing. It’s not political. There’s not one side that is going to say, ‘Well, you know he shouldn’t be picking up litter.’ It’s unquestionably good for the community, right? I just feel good when I’m doing it.”
JOIN IN THE FUN
This year, The Trash Pick-Up Club of Ashburn has scheduled its annual plogging 5K run for Saturday, Sept. 27. More information is available on the club’s TPC Ashburn Facebook page, or its Instagram page, @tpc.ashburn.