Who's up for plogging?

Plogging is here! And yes, you're right, was the umpteenth Anglicism necessary? In this case, we are not talking about a new lumberjack practice, nor an alternative therapy to disconnect, nor writing a blog while doing a podcast, but something much less glamorous: picking up trash while walking or going for a run.

This trashy revival was born in Sweden a couple of years ago: the Swedes, always at the environmental forefront, invented plogging by combining their expression Plock upp and jogging, and since then the practice has been spreading around the world: the first world, that is, in the rest of the planet this is called "working as a ragpicker" or "collecting waste to survive."

Strictly speaking, trash has been collected for centuries - specifically, since we started throwing shit on the ground - but a cool name was needed for hipsters to start doing it organized and with the emphasis of an Estrella ad. And now things have taken off, in trendy neighborhoods there isn't enough trash for so many ploggers and there are even mobile apps that allow you to monitor the kilos of shit you collect.

Doing plogging is very easy: you put on some old kitchen gloves (so as not to get dirty), grab a trash bag and go for a walk around the city. The gloves give ploggers a very funny CSI vibe: this, and the runner's uniform, is what differentiates them from the municipal cleaning brigade.

Here the group "Barcelona Plogging" already has about forty members on Facebook, and they meet at least once a month to tour the city, usually Barceloneta beach. This summer, they met at dawn, when the promenade is a pigsty, and immediately managed to fill their bags with bottles and all kinds of plastic and waste. It's that thing about Mens sana in corpore sano, but with an ecological variant: doing -physical- health while promoting environmental health. Plogging is practiced in numerous European capitals, and in New York there are groups like NYC Plogging that clean parks in 4 boroughs, with hundreds of participants.

Among the famous people who practice plogging is David Sedaris, who was already plogging before it was called that. The American writer was supposed to go for a walk for inspiration, and one good day he decided to take the opportunity to pick up the trash that was piling up in the neighborhood. As The Guardian explained, three years later, the neighborhood thanked him for his work by naming the garbage truck after him.

I think the plogging initiative is fantastic, and I believe it should become widespread among citizens, whether they are athletes or walkers. Not only because we have places in the city that are a mess (beaches, parks, and promenades, but also sidewalks or Renfe platforms, for example) but because it could make a very large part of the citizenry aware that cleanliness is everyone's business, and not just municipal services. Seeing Shakira doing plogging, for example, could have an interesting ripple effect.

However, surely you have seen people who unwrap an ice cream and throw the plastic on the ground, or who roll down the car window and empty the ashtray in the middle of the street, and we have rarely had the civic courage to confront them and tell them they are pigs. Plogging can serve to awaken consciences, but the battle against dirty people will not be won only with a brand new Anglicism. As the popular saying goes: it is not the one who plogs the most who is cleaner, but the one who dirties the least.