Featured Image Credit: ITV
Topics: UK News, Good Morning Britain, Sport
Claire Reid
A man has appeared on Good Morning Britain urging Brits to take up ‘plogging’ ahead of this year's World Plogging Championships.
The third annual World Plogging Championship event was held in Genoa, Italy and wrapped up earlier this month. You can find out more about plogging here:
This year, the men’s World title was won this year by Manuel Jesús Ortega García, while the women’s title went to Elena Canuto, who was world champion last year.
And plogger Luke Douglas-Home is ‘hoping’ to assemble a ‘full squad’ for the championships next year and is pleading with Brits to get plogging.
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Speaking to GMB host Kate Garraway who suggested that it might be a ‘bit sad’ with Luke being all on his own while representing the UK in the competition, Luke said: “I’m hoping for next year, the WPC - the World Plogging Championships 2024 - I hope to bring a full squad: a GB Team.
“So we’re going to start the qualifiers for the GB Team this spring.”
At this point Richard Madeley chipped in to tell viewers: “If you fancy it, get in touch with the programme and we’ll get in touch with Luke.”
So, what is plogging?
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The word originated in Sweden and comes from combining the Swedish verbs plocka upp (pick up) and jogga (jog) - so it’s basically jogging while litter picking: a hobby that’s good for you and good for the planet.
During his appearance on Good Morning Britain, Luke explained that the most ‘valuable’ rubbish for him and his fellow ploggers to pick up are items that are particularly harmful to the environment, such as car batteries.
He explained: “The most valuable waste to pick up, is the car battery. There is a metric called CO2e which is ‘carbon dioxide equivalent’ - so the most valuable waste for us was car batteries.”
For those unaware, CO2e - or carbon dioxide equivalent - means the ‘number of metric tons of CO2 emissions with the same global warming potential as one metric ton of another greenhouse gas’.
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He added that the ‘most toxic’ items were the best he could retrieve, before sharing that one bloke he went out plogging with once managed to collect three car batteries.
At this year’s championships it's estimated that the competitors, including Luke, collected an average of 2.2 kg of litter per km travelled.
Altogether, they covered around 1,318 km of paths and roads over the course of the six hour race.