His hobby is collecting highway trash — 6,272 bags so far, more than anyone in NC

Josh Shaffer
·4 min read

Most every day, you’ll see Gus Vandermeeren trudging down the filthiest stretch of New Bern Avenue, collecting dirty diapers, Funyun wrappers and squashed Squirt cans while the tractor-trailers whiz past — just missing him.

In an hour’s time, he can cover a quarter-mile, pushing a homemade cart with his name painted on the side, cutting up the big pieces with a knife he keeps clipped on the can, fetching water bottles out of ditches with his detachable “excursion bucket.”

“It’s a beautiful day to be alive,” he said Wednesday as I followed him down the hot asphalt, passing budget motels and a pawn shop. “Don’t bother with the cigarette butts. There’s too frickin’ many of them.”

Gus Vandermeeren decided to start his garbage collecting hobby while watching British football on the couch. “If I can do it,” he asks, “why not?”
Gus Vandermeeren decided to start his garbage collecting hobby while watching British football on the couch. “If I can do it,” he asks, “why not?”

At 64, Vandermeeren has plucked so much trash off New Bern Avenue that the state Department of Transportation gave him a special spot to dump it. Out of all the volunteers in North Carolina’s adopt-a-highway program, he’s grabbed the most refuse by far — 6,272 bags of it as of last Wednesday.

He calls garbage his hobby, and he tackles it the way some people play golf. Six months ago, he bought a special Chevy van just to accommodate his trash kit, which includes seven pairs of tongs.

Before Vandermeeren would talk to me, he made me promise not to make him sound boastful.

He doesn’t do it for applause, or even out of a special contempt for litter. He nurtures the quaint and fading notion that human beings coexist in a shared community, and that pitching in for its common good carries a personal benefit bigger than a birdie on a par-5 hole.

“I just try to do what I can,” he said. “If I can do it, why not? Saves everybody a little bit of money. Makes the world look nicer. Feeds my soul, even though I’m an atheist.

Working on busy New Bern Avenue, Gus Vandermeeren has never been hit by a car. But he’s come close after stepping on an untied shoelace and falling on the pavement. “Now, I always check my shoelaces.”
Working on busy New Bern Avenue, Gus Vandermeeren has never been hit by a car. But he’s come close after stepping on an untied shoelace and falling on the pavement. “Now, I always check my shoelaces.”

Vandermeeren’s obsession began while he was watching British soccer one Saturday, relishing his place on the sofa, enjoying a beer, when a commercial suddenly aired about plastic bottles floating in the ocean.

He felt himself growing lazy and fat on his couch, so he started his trash clean-up habit on foot almost immediately. Soon, he was taking a pickup truck, scooping up discarded lawn mowers and bicycles to offer for free on his sidewalk, gathering salvageable blankets to take to Goodwill.

Before long, he had officially adopted 2 miles of New Bern Avenue between the Neuse River and Corporation Drive, where his name appears on a signpost.

Gus Vandermeeren has his own adopt-a-highway sign on New Bern Avenue, and he collects so much garbage the state Department of Transportation gave him his own dumping spot.
Gus Vandermeeren has his own adopt-a-highway sign on New Bern Avenue, and he collects so much garbage the state Department of Transportation gave him his own dumping spot.

Most volunteers leave their pickings bagged by the side of the road for DOT to collect later. Vandermeeren can’t wait that long. If it rains for two or three days, he gets itchy imagining the junk piling up.

“I tell people we can’t make it perfect, but we can make it better,” he said, grabbing a Frito’s bag off a storm drain. “That was going to go in the ocean. Might have saved a sea turtle right there.”

As he walks, Vandermeeren makes up stories about unusual items strewn along the shoulder: a fed-up girlfriend tossed her boyfriend’s shoe out the window, for instance.

“The funniest thing I ever found was a 3-foot-tall, anatomically correct penis,” he said. “It was rather heavy.”

In four years, Vandermeeren has tripped over his untied shoelaces and fallen in front of a tractor-trailer, rolling out of the way just in time. He has stepped in a sinkhole and tumbled down a hill in pursuit of a water bottle, nearly breaking his leg.

“But I did end up getting the water bottle,” he said. “Sucker wasn’t going to escape me.”

He has laid blankets over people sleeping on the sidewalk and run from gunfire around Plainview Drive, which he calls the dirtiest street in Raleigh.

But nearly everybody hollers thanks or honks a friendly horn. Just last week, the co-founder of Raleigh cleaning company Environmental Control passed Vandermeeren on the street and offered him as many heavy-duty trash bags as he needed. He promoted her business on his nextdoor page, recommending Environmental Control to anyone needing janitorial service.

Best of all: in four years, out of millions of people driving past his cart, only one has shouted, “You fool!”

“Only one!” he said. “That gives me hope.”

Anyone can adopt a section of North Carolina road. To do so, click here or visit the NC Department of Transportation’s website ncdot.gov and search for “get involved.”