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Plogging to stay fit and keep earth clean – new Swedish sport catches on with world championships in Italy collecting thousands pounds of trash
The plogging movement was started by Erik Ahlström in 2016. After moving to Stockholm from a small ski-community in northern Sweden, Ahlström became frustrated with the amount of litter he saw while riding his bike to work every day. “I was shocked by the amount of junk there was in nature,” says Ahlström. “The same debris could remain in the road for several weeks without anyone picking it up, so I started picking it up. It felt good in my heart to clean up even a small place.”
Stopping to clean up trash became a habit, then a part of his exercise routine as he incorporated the activity into his runs. By 2016 other people were joining in, and plogging runs, with groups of couple coming together to run and pick up trash, became official events in Sweden. Since then the movement has grown organically around the world, thanks in large part to social media. Initially used as a tool for organizing events, plogging-related posts and hashtags have helped spread the activity from country to country, with most new participants inspired by what they’ve seen online.
This global reach has led to over 40 countries being represented in the official online “Plogga” group and major events have been organized in nearly all of them. While most of the initial growth was in Europe, plogging groups can now be found as far away as Ecuador and Thailand, a global reach that has far exceeded the initial expectations of the movement’s founder.
The beauty of plogging, Ahlström believes, is its simplicity. Unlike many other exercise trends, it doesn’t require classes or expensive equipment, just a bag and a desire to make a positive difference. “Everyone is allowed to do it how they want to,” he says. “Anything works. The most important thing is that waste is being taken out of nature.”
This Strange Swedish Cardio Routine Is Good for Mother Earth
When it comes to living lives centered around sustainability and eco-awareness in the modern world, it’s pretty clear that we’re all playing second fiddle to the Scandinavians, especially the Swedes.
Environmental stewardship is inherent to Swedish life. That’s partly a result of Allemansrätt, or the Right of Public Access, which grants all citizens the right to access and explore all wilderness areas, even private land (unless stated otherwise) and creates a strong incentive for Swedes to keep their natural areas clean. Sweden also routinely ranks as one of the top sustainable countries in the world.
It’s no surprise then that Sweden has come up with a way to clean up its parks and wilderness while getting some decent cardio in, too. Plogging, or in its original Swedish, plogga—a mash-up of the Swedish words plocka upp (pick up) and jogga (jog)—is the practice of picking up trash and litter while jogging. It’s equal parts sport and hobby, can be done anywhere from hiking trails to sidewalks, and it encourages people to help keep their communities and local wilderness areas clean. All while promoting healthy living and aerobic activity.
The plogging movement has snowballed into a worldwide phenomenon dispersed through social media and community groups and events. Merriam-Webster is even eyeing it for inclusion in the dictionary. In the US, Keep America Beautiful has been promoting plogging through its TrashDash events in cities around the country. Many cities, including Field Mag’s two editorial hubs in New York City and Portland, Oregon, have plogging clubs, groups, and events. Plogging has also found a strong foothold in India, where plastic pollution is dire.
Interested in plogging? It’s easy, but here are six tips to help you hit the (trash-free) ground running.
For the first time, all the participants to a world competition arrived to the finish line together, carring heavy bags of litter, cheered by the supporters. The first World Plogging Championship made it clear: when we run together for a common purpose, we are all winners.
At the World Plogging Championship, contestants have lugged in tires, TVs and at least one Neapolitan coffee maker
GENOA, Italy—Renato Zanelli crossed the finish line with a rusty iron hanging from his neck while pulling 140 pounds of trash on an improvised sled fashioned from a slab of plastic waste. Zanelli, a retired IT specialist, flashed a tired smile, but he suspected his garbage haul wouldn’t be enough to defend his title as world champion of plogging—a sport that combines running with trash collecting.
A rival had just finished the race with a chair around his neck and dragging three tires, a television and four sacks of trash. Another crossed the line with muscles bulging, towing a large refrigerator. But the strongest challenger was Manuel Jesus Ortega Garcia, a Spanish plumber who arrived at the finish pulling a fridge, a dishwasher, a propane gas tank, a fire extinguisher and a host of other odds and ends. “The competition is intense this year,” said Zanelli. Now 71, he used his fitness and knack for finding trash to compete against athletes half his age. “I’m here to help the environment, but I also want to win.”
Italy, a land of beauty, is also a land of uncollected trash. The country struggles with chronic littering, inefficient garbage collection in many cities, and illegal dumping in the countryside of everything from washing machines to construction waste. Rome has become an emblem of Italy’s inability to fix its trash problem.
So it was fitting that at the recent World Plogging Championship more than 70 athletes from 16 countries tested their talents in this northern Italian city. During the six hours of the race, contestants collect points by racking up miles and vertical distance, and by carrying as much trash across the finish line as they can. Trash gets scored based on its weight and environmental impact. Batteries and electronic equipment earn the most points.
Contestants collected more than 6,600 pounds of trash. The haul included fridges, bikes, dozens of tires, baby seats, mattresses, lead pipes, stoves, chairs, TVs, 1980s-era boomboxes with cassettes still inside, motorcycle helmets, electric fans, traffic cones, air rifles, a toilet and a soccer goal. “This park hasn’t been this clean since the 15 century,” said Genoa’s ambassador for sport, Roberto Giordano.
