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What is plogging and why you should start doing it on your holiday vacation

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If you do plogging on your holiday, you can help to preserve and fight against all the damages caused by human beings to the environment.

Plogging is not only another way to work out, but it means much more: it means mainly cleaning up waste. So, why not doing plogging during our holiday vacation?

We at Rifò have been caught by this beautiful and simple idea, which was born in Sweden from an environmental fitness movement. We strongly believe that the summer season, particularly this year, could be the best time to make a positive impact on the environment.

How plogging was born and what it is

Who could come up with such an idea if not one of the greenest countries in Europe? Plogging was born in Sweden in 2016 from the Plogga collective, whose slogan is "Pluck and jog". This group of ecologist runners succeeded in spreading their initiative, so that at present they have a website, arrange plogging tour and events, have proper ambassadors and offer also team building opportunities for enterprises. Wow!

On their Instagram page you can see in detail all their activities and upcoming events.

According to this diagram from the Plogga association, how long does it take the waste left in the wild to decay? Here it is an estimate in years.

*år from Swedish “year”

From this point of view, plogging is something useful you can do in order to keep the environment safe. The phenomenon of plogging has been spread even in Italy with several events, in which people gather to go and clean up the cities or the most beautiful seasides from garbage and plastic waste. We have even found a Facebook group for this kind of activities.

You don’t need any particular equipment to start doing plogging, other than an easily transportable garbage bag. Once you have it at hand, just start your run, or maybe a swim, and watch out for all the waste and garbage you come across. At that point, with a nice lunge or squat, or whatever you prefer, you pick up the garbage. Simple and useful.

So what is the point of plogging according to the Plogga collective?

• Stay fit and stay healthy (obviously)
• Reduce plastic waste in the cities, as well as in the country
• Play an active role in society and reduce costs
• Preserve the wildlife
• Improve the security of public spaces and preventing deterioration

Doing plogging on holidays

2020 has made us realize that we are not the owner of our planet and how our lives are fleeting, so why not spending some of our vacation days to make something beneficial for the environment? If we watched closely at our mother Earth, we could find so much useless waste, which sometimes isn’t biodegradable: cigarette butts, used masks, fast food packagings, and so on. It’s totally free to collect and throw them away correctly!

How is it possible to do plogging in different ecosystems?

• Plogging in the mountains. Have you chosen to spend your holiday surrounded by the beauty of the mountains while doing trekking? Then we sincerely hope you don’t have to do any plogging. Anyway, bring always with you a garbage bag, just in case you see a scrap paper, a plastic bottle or a wasted mask on your path.
• Plogging at the seaside. Snorkeling can be more funny if, while doing that, you remove that plastic sheet from the sand. You can bring a fishnet so that, once you get out of water, you can collect everything in the garbage bag. Regarding this, the Plogga movement made up a challenge in one of their Instagram post: “Everytime you go to the beach, take away with you a piece of plastic waste, let’s see how many you will have collected at the end of your vacation!”
• Plogging in the city. Plogging could be more fulfilling if you have decided to stay in your hometown. Find the route most in need of cleaning, choose a suitable time for physical activity and run! River banks as well as less cared and cleaned parks are strongly recommended.

 

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Heute sammeln wir wieder Müll und machen gleichzeitig Sport. 1-2x pro Jahr veranstalten wir pro Standort unser Clean and Train. Heute in Wiesbaden gekoppelt an das #rheincleanup Vergangenen Donnerstag berichtete das HR Fernsehen über die letzte Aktion in Gießen. In der Mediathek könnt ihr es euch anschauen: https://www.ardmediathek.de/hr/video/alles-wissen/plogging-mit-sport-gegen-muell/hr-fernsehen/Y3JpZDovL2hyLW9ubGluZS85OTg4OA/

Un post condiviso da greenletics (@greenletics) in data: 26 Giu 2020 alle ore 11:02 PDT

To sum up, plogging isn’t a trend, but an easy and useful activity. A little contribution (here you can find other advice) which seems like a drop in the ocean, but could become significant from a collective perspective.

We at Rifò are used to considering waste as a new resource:this is the reason why we decided to create a clothing collection by using recycled yarns. However, besides recycling and reusing, we also need to clean up the natural environment we live in, in such a way as to reduce this waste to a minimum!