Anne-Marie Gingras is about to do her morning jog near the Beauport River. Equipped with a garbage bag and gloves, she not only runs to keep fit, but also to pick up the trash.
Inspired by the French initiative “Clean your kilometer” born during the pandemic, she started collecting waste on foot two years ago. The idea of running at the same time came naturally to him, because it makes picking up litter “much faster”.
Anne-Marie is not the only person who had this idea. This phenomenon is growing in Quebec and around the world. It even has a name: “plogging”.
I have hardly ever run in my life except for plogging!
Anne-Marie Gingras
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, THE PRESS
Anne-Marie Gingras in action on the Beauport trail
The origins of “plogging”
Originating in Sweden, the term plogging is formed from the contraction of plocka upp (to pick up, in Swedish) and to jogging. The first event of its kind took place in 2016 in Stockholm.
According to plogging.org, it is estimated that more than 3 million people have already taken part in a session of this sport. Every day, more than 20,000 runners pick up litter while running in more than a hundred countries.
James Guilbaud, marathon runner and founder of the Plogga Montreal group, organizes plogging events in Montreal on a voluntary basis. Its most recent, which took place in May, the PloggaLoop, brought together some sixty runners and collected 155 kg of waste from the streets of Montreal. He observed that fast food packaging, such as coffee cups, is among the most common waste.
Endowed with a great environmental conscience, he believes that the population should not be discouraged by the waste generated by industries. “The responsibility is also with the citizen”, he indicates in videoconference. “If, individually, we do small actions, it will bring about big changes! »
During his participation in the Montreal marathon, he picked up all the trash he came across on the ground, something that surprised many runners.
Cross initiatives
Through social networks, the paths of James Guilbaud and Anne-Marie Gingras crossed in 2022 when they co-organized Maskathon Week, an event to collect used masks deployed in Quebec. In one week, around 300 people managed to collect nearly 70,000 soiled masks.
This initiative piqued the curiosity of Diana Carolina, sustainable development coordinator at On court Montréal. She decided to also organize plogging races and contacted James Guilbaud to become the eco-ambassador of the Montreal organization.
Seeking a concrete initiative to do with her team as part of Earth Day, she organized a plogging session with the help of James.
“Doing this activity makes people really think about the life cycle of a discarded product,” she says. Seeing someone picking up trash in the street makes others more aware of respecting their environment. »
Diana Carolina hopes the rise in popularity of plogging will help people not only be careful about what they do with their trash, but also generate less of it. “The best waste is the one you don’t create,” she adds.