The venture began as an exercise in litter control. In 2001, Boesch said, “I was a naïve twenty-two-year-old from Germany, and I thought I could help the city a little bit by clearing up the stations. In Germany, you have to recycle. It’s a law.” She went on, “So I’d go around picking MetroCards up from the floor, and people would give me weird looks. Once, a station attendant came out of his booth and confronted me—he thought I was going to sell swipes. This was before mobile phones, so I couldn’t exactly show him what I had in mind.”