A group of Winnipeg students is encouraging others to pick up ‘plogging,’ a fitness trend that has health benefits for the body and the environment.
‘Plogging’ began in Sweden. The word combines ‘jogging’ with the Swedish phrase for picking up litter, and like the portmanteau title, the activity is also a mix.
Ploggers pick up litter while running, but the organizers of the Prairie Ploggers Facebook group suggest Manitobans can do any physical activity while cleaning up the world around them.
“We’re kind of pushing it to be a little simpler,” said Heather Woods, one of the students behind the project. “Just get outside, get active, and if you see any litter, pick it up.”
Woods said the group began with a discussion in a social media marketing class at CDI college about the popular Winnipeg Rocks group, a community that shares photos of hiding and hunting for decorative rocks. The instructor mentioned when he went hunting for rocks at Assiniboine Park, he spotted a lot of litter instead, and they decided to form a community to help tackle the problem.
In early July, the group launched a page and group on Facebook with a video of a social experiment that involved counting how many people walked past a disposable coffee cup placed downtown before someone picked it up.
“We watched 87 people walk past that cup that’s right on the sidewalk, over about a two hour span,” Woods said, adding that she hopes the Prairie Plogging group gets people to take action.
“We want people to go out, pick litter up, take pictures and post it to this group because we think it will raise awareness,” said Woods. “We think the more people that are doing this, the more it will catch on.”
Woods said there’s no shortage of refuse to pick up in Winnipeg.
“We’re actually quite surprised by how much litter we’ve found,” she said.
