Sustainability Tip: Creating a Pick-up Culture and Talkin’ Trash — October is Plogtober

By Alliance President Terry Gips

Do you like to walk or bike? Does seeing litter along the way bother you like me? If so, join me in doing something about it and picking it up. On my daily 2-mile bike ride with my dog Teddy I just stop and put it in a plastic bag (usually part of the litter I find). I enjoy beautifying our world, protecting wildlife from ingesting our waste and keeping microplastics out of our water, while exercising more from bending over. Plus, I’m happy making a difference, brightening people’s day and helping them become more conscious.

What I didn’t know is that I’m part of something much larger, a global movement combining exercise with caring for Creation. It’s called “plogging”, which comes from the Swedish mash-up of jogging and “plocka upp,” which means “pick up.” You simply pick up litter while you jog. You can also “plalk” (walking while picking up litter) and “plike” (biking and trash cleanup). October is Plogtober or Plogging Month and you can join me, Iceland’s President Jóhannesson and more than 3 million people in 100+ countries to celebrate it, according to the movement’s nonprofit Plogging.

The Origin Story of Plogging

Back in 2016, Swedish fitness and environmental lover Erik Ahlström had a great idea. Why not combine Swedes’ commitment to sustainability with their passion for fitness and roll it into a fun-filled activity he named plogging, according to Peacefuldumpling.

Stockholm became the first city to host an organized “Plogga” in 2016, as Plogging points out. It then spread to other countries in 2018, following increased concern about plastic pollution. In the US, Keep America Beautiful has been promoting plogging through its TrashDash events in cities around the country. It’s now taking the world by storm, including an annual World Plogging Championship.

Quantifying the Amazing Environmental Benefits of the World Plogging Championship

The third World Plogging Championship was held October 1, 2023 in Genoa, Italy with an award ceremony for the world’s best ploggers. A new world record was set with about 6,600 pounds of litter recovered over the 6 hours, with more than 4,400 pounds recycled, or 71% of the total, according to Plogging. It was estimated that competing athletes collected an average of 4.8 pounds of litter per kilometer travelled. The participants cleaned up approximately 817 miles of paths and roads.

The event had a considerable social and environmental impact, with almost 6 million grams of CO2 not released into the atmosphere by correctly separating and recycling the waste collected. These emissions are equal to the amount produced by a car travelling 60,000 km or 50 flights between Milan and Rome. Consequently, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo has strongly supported this initiative, saying, “Plogging is a discipline that can truly inspire effective actions to address environmental challenges, thus helping to build a more sustainable world through sport as well.”

Additional Benefits of Plogging

Peacefuldumpling points to numerous other plogging benefits, from community-building and heightened exercise to the well-being of both people and the planet:

1. 1. Protecting wildlife and marine life – Mass production of plastics has accelerated to 8.3 billion metric tons each year, with 6.3 billion metric tons becoming plastic waste and 8 million metric tons winding up in the ocean and negatively affecting marine life, according to National Geographic. Plogging combats these impacts on land and marine wildlife by collecting trash before it’s in waterways and animal habitats, while recycling litter.

1. 1. Heightened Cardio – Plogging is a more intense workout than just jogging. By combining running with squatting to pick up trash, the Swedish-based fitness app Lifesum determined that a half hour of plogging burned 288 calories compared to 235 calories from jogging alone in the same time, according to the Washington Post.

1. 1. Community-building – “Whether online or in person, plogging has a rapidly growing community of intentional ploggers. On the official plogga website, ploggers are encouraged to start a new habit by plogging every Tuesday along with hundreds of other ploggers, using the hashtag #ploggingtuesday and #plogga. In addition to online communities, local communities exist across the globe as well. Don’t see a chapter near you? Start one. You can use apps like Meet Up and Facebook groups to gather local interest and start plogging as a community.”

1. Saving communities money – According to KeepLibertyBeautiful.org, litter clean-up costs the US more than $11.5 billion each year. It affects tourism rates and homeowner value, as well as decisions by business about where to locate their company. “Plogging is a simple way to invest in your community (for free!) and help re-allocate litter clean-up costs to other greater community needs,” as Peacefuldumpling points out.

Based on my experience, I like to fully agree with @emilywrightcello on Instagram who says that 80% of the trash pieces she picks up are smaller than the palm of her hand, like cigarette butts, straws and bits of foam containers. Stopping to pick them up makes a big difference because they’re more likely to either get ingested by wildlife or breakdown into microplastics that get washed into our rivers and drinking water.

6 Tips on Plogging

Field Mag provides 6 helpful hints on beginning your plogging journey:

1. 1. Plog where you jog – Whether you’re a trail runner or an urban jogger, plogging can be done in any environment. Just keep your eyes peeled for bits of trash along your route.

1. 1. Bring a bag – Bringing along a plastic or reusable bag is one of the most important parts of plogging, especially if you’re running in an area where there aren’t garbage bins for you to discard trash as you go.

1. 1. Wear reusable gloves (I don’t and just use the plastic bag to pick-up) – While picking up litter is a great way to take care of the environment, it’s also important to remember your own health and safety. Stray garbage can be full of potential hazards.

1. 1. You don’t have to pick up trash the entire time you’re running – Just because you’re plogging doesn’t mean you have to compromise your workout. You might set a goal of only stopping or pausing to pick up litter during your warm-up and cool-down periods. Don’t feel bad for not plogging the entire time. As Ahlström says, “…the goal is to trigger the reflex of picking up litter when we see it.”

1. 1. Don’t worry about cleaning up an entire area – Plogging is about taking an inclusive, community-oriented view at the issue of littering and waste. But you don’t have to pick up every single piece of trash you see (it’s not going to be much of a workout that way). Don’t let guilt stand in your way of also getting what you want out of your plogging experience.

1. You don’t need to be a runner to plog – Even though plogging gets its name from jogging, the principal purpose of it is cleaning up the outdoors. That can be done whether you’re a runner or not. If you’re a cyclist, you can stop for a minute to pick up some trash along the road.

I’ll add one more thought. I don’t pick up trash on the Sabbath. In fact, I tell myself to see the world in all its beauty through rose-colored glasses, as the Holy Ground, the sacred place, it is. I never worry about taking a day off because I know the trash will likely be there waiting for me the next day. What would life be like if it wasn’t? What a gift we could give each other and the planet.

The great thing about plogging is that it’s empowering and reminds us that we can create the world of our dreams. I hope you’ll join me in realizing that and share about your experience.