Jogging out the trash

Swedish trend of ‘plogging’ sees runners clean up streets

Have you recently spotted people toting trash bags while jogging ? Or their hands filled with old plastic bottles? You might soon.

Sweden’s latest fitness craze — plogging — is catching on. The term is a mash-up of jogging and the Swedish “plocka upp,” meaning pick up. In this case, litter.

Across Europe, there are plogging groups in Scandinavia, Germany and beyond. In the United States and Canada, it’s just starting to catch on among exercisers who are fed up with rubbish along their route.

“I’m not going to just let litter sit there. I’m not going to just walk past that plastic bottle,” said plogger and Alexandria, Va., resident Emily Wright. “It’s not that I don’t think it’s gross to pick it up. I do. But I also think it’s gross for a person to not take responsibility for it.”

Wright, 40, has been plogging for several months, but just a few weeks ago learned what she’s been doing has a name.

Her partner used to lovingly tease her about her habit of going out for a run-walk for about an hour with a trash bag and plastic gloves.

“He used to call it my trash runs,” said Wright, a writer and cellist. “A few weeks ago he said, ‘the Swedes have a name for your trash runs!’”

She mostly picks up cigarette butts, bits of Styrofoam containers, plastic bottles and bottle caps. “There are an alarming number of full diapers,” she said. “They turn my stomach the most.”

Plogging not only helps the environment, it’s quite good for your health. Think squats while jogging.

According to the Swedishbased fitness app Lifesum, which now makes it possible for users to track plogging activity, a half-hour of jogging plus picking up trash will burn 288 calories for the average person, compared with the 235 burned by jogging alone. A brisk walk will expend about 120.

In Sweden, plogger Maja Tesch, 28, said she learned about plogging last year, when it became popular in the Scandinavian country. It spread through word of mouth, and the hashtag #plogging started popping up on social media. Tesch, a nurse, said she regularly organizes plogging events in which she and friends will pluck litter for a few hours, then spend time hanging outside together around a fire.

Laura Lindberg, who lives in Hoboken, N.J., said a few weeks ago she learned about plogging and had what she called an “aha moment.”

“It was a no-brainer. I knew I could incorporate it into my runs,” said Lindberg, 36. “I suddenly felt guilty for not doing it for all these years I’ve been running. All you need is a bag.”

She also takes along a pair of gardening gloves she stuffs into her pocket. She said seeing litter on the street used to upset her.

“Then it clicked, duh, I don’t have to be frustrated about it. I can do something about it.”

Lindberg said that while she thoroughly enjoys picking up trash in Hoboken, she wouldn’t attempt it where she works in New York.

“With the pace on sidewalks, I’d be infuriating people if I started doing that here in Manhattan,” she said.