Pick Up The Pace
Let’s go plogging! What do you mean you don’t know what it is?
ORIGINATING ON THE STREETS of Sweden, plogging – from the words ‘jogging’ and ‘pick-up’ ( plocka upp in Swedish) – has become popular at just the right time. We live in an era when plastic pollution is having an increased impact on our planet, so plogging raises awareness of the litter spilling out across our parks and clogging our rivers and oceans.
Picking up rubbish when on a run is nothing new, but the first proper mention of ‘plogging’ online seems to be in an Instagram post dated October 2016. Two years on, there are over 19,000 #plogging-related posts featuring rightly self-satisfied runners and large piles of rubbish.
My plogging debut has been organised by headphone brand Aftershokz, which has invited 10 of us to Regent’s Park, northwest London. At first glance, the area is spotless, but just a few minutes into our plog – which will take us round the park and onto Primrose Hill – it’s clear we’re going to have some rubbish piles to contend with.
Armed with bin bags and litter pickers, we plod along looking for any sign of waste, and soon find that even the cleanest of Royal Parks is tainted by trash. Nestled in every hedgerow and hiding in every patch of long grass are, in order of prevalence: cigarette butts, plastic bottles, beer cans, bottle tops and wet wipes.
Before long, our plogging senses are honed and bin bags begin to bulge. The running pace is leisurely and broken up by frequent litter stops – best to save your highintensity interval training for another day – but it’s all strangely exhilarating, nonetheless.
Rey Smart, fitness coach, founder of Be Smart Get Fit and a fellow plogger, agrees: ‘It’s really fun,’ he says. ‘It’s a great way to meet new people and it combines two feel-good things: running and cleaning up the environment.’
Plogging’s appeal is universal, says Smart: ‘It’s definitely going to catch on, because you don’t need to be a runner to do it – you can jog or you can walk. You have to stop frequently to pick up the rubbish, so it’s not too physically challenging.’
Yet, as we make our way out of Regent’s Park and onto Primrose Hill, it’s clear plogging challenges your body in ways a normal run can’t. It’s not lung-busting stuff, but the act of carrying an increasingly heavy bag of rubbish, as well as compressing and releasing the handle of a litter picker for an hour or more, gives your upper body a workout of sorts. Equally, squatting down to pick up plastic might not be glamorous work, but it does place extra strain on your quads and hamstrings.
A lucrative home straight to the top of the hill sees me haul in a few more bottles, a sock and – the catch of the day – a confetti-filled birthday balloon. At the summit, it’s shocking how much rubbish 10 runners have collected in one hour – in one of the most well-kept areas of London.
Kim Fassetta, chief marketing officer at Aftershokz, says plogging is an activity all runners should try, because ‘it keeps you fit and allows you to give back to the community. Following the event [in Regent’s Park], a number of the attendees said their running groups will now be implementing plogging as part of their warm-down, which is a great idea.’ She added that she had also received a lot of feedback on Aftershokz’s social media channels from runners who are setting up informal plogging groups in their local areas. ‘We were really overwhelmed by the response – it shows this is something people are really passionate about.’