Burn calories and save the earth with this Swedish fitness craze.
Derived from the Swedish term “plocka upp,” plogging is a fitness trend that combines running and picking up litter. “Ploggers” carry trash bags and don rubber gloves while running in their local parks to “plocka,” or pick up trash along the way.
On Earth Day last April, the nonprofits Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and Keep Virginia Cozy partnered up to host a plogging event at Väsen Brewing Company in Richmond. “It combines the trails that we have here in the city with a new fun way to get people excited about being outside, as well as making the areas we all recreate in just a bit cleaner,” says Brian Bell, founder of Keep Virginia Cozy. “It became a competition of seeing who could find the ‘weirdest’ trash or who had to run the farthest to get some litter.”
The organization also has a plogging event planned for Earth Day, April 22.
This article originally appeared in our April 2019 issue.
