Hi, my name's John McShane, and I’m the inventor and founder of CleanTrek. I’m from Round Lake Beach, IL, studied mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and have been living in San Diego, CA for the last few years. In my free time, I love getting out into nature by walking, hiking, running, biking, and snorkeling!

In the spring of 2021, I visited Yosemite National Park for the first time, which had been a goal of mine from a young age. While the views were beautiful, I couldn’t get over how much trash I saw along the trails and near the visitor centers. What especially bothered me though was that while I wished the trash wasn’t there, I oftentimes wasn’t willing to do anything about it. I wasn’t about to touch a muddy face mask (as were quite common in the era of COVID-19) with my bare hands, and even if I did pick up a piece of trash, I didn’t have a good place to put it. And to be honest, this was my vacation away from my busy life, and I wanted to relax and take in the views, not repeatedly stop to bend over and fill my pockets with dirty garbage. Maybe you can relate to my dilemma.

As I hiked around, I quietly thought of solutions. Then, as I stomped my trekking pole next to a plastic wrapper, it dawned on me: what if a trekking pole could be converted into a trash grabber? For the rest of that trip, I paid close attention to the hikers around me and noticed that roughly half of them were hiking with trekking poles. I realized that if I could design a simple add-on to people’s existing trekking poles, it would enable countless hikers to clean up while they hike, with minimal additional effort. And thus, the idea of CleanTrek was born.

CleanTrek started out as something I wanted for myself, really. Sure, I thought it’d be cool if I could launch it into a legitimate product, but I wanted to start small. And if it failed, at least I’d still have something that I like to use! I bought myself a 3D printer and designed an initial prototype on my personal computer. Mind you, I was working a full-time job, so this was very much a side project. It wasn’t until spring of 2023 (2 years later!) that I finally had a fully-functional prototype that I was proud of, which closely resembled today’s current Grabber design.

I took my prototype on its first hike, and while I was impressed with its grabbing capabilities, I quickly realized that I had nowhere to put the trash that I grabbed. In this moment, I knew I needed a storage solution, and thus, the idea for the Collector was born, which could be optionally attached to a second trekking pole.

As the 2023 went on, I became really impressed by my progress and gained confidence that this was something with real market potential. My progress was halted that fall when I left my engineering job to start a master’s program in electrical engineering. My goal was to pivot into renewable energy technology, but I quickly realized that returning to school didn’t feel like the right use of time and money for me. Therefore, I decided to save all that soon-to-be tuition money and put it into giving CleanTrek a real shot. I discontinued my master’s program and purchased “Patent It Yourself” by Nolo to get to work on writing my own provisional patent application. Fast forward to today - my innovations are now patent-pending, and I get to work on my passion full-time!

I’ve been living the life these past several months, but working with no income obviously can’t last forever. If I’m going to continue with this project, I need to put this idea out into the world and get a real measure of how much potential it has! Really, I’d love to build a community of supporters who share my vision and can help make CleanTrek a reality. Yes, I unapologetically ask for your financial support, but if you don’t have any money to spare, please don’t let that stop you from helping in other ways. Ideas, feedback, and spreading the word are all incredibly valuable ways to help this project succeed as well!

If you’ve read this far, I hope you’re resonating with my story. Please don’t be shy to reach out! I love to make connections with like-minded people. I’m not hiring at the moment, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be a place for you on my team in the future! I still appreciate help in other ways - if you’re willing to lend your advice or expertise in business, marketing, engineering, etc., or if you just want to connect, please reach out and let’s talk!

- John McShane