What Happens When Runners Stop Stepping Over Trash?

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Hello runners, today we are going to talk about an event that I did in Boston when I went to the Boston Run Show in early March, and if you've never heard of the Boston Run Show, it is kind of like an expo.
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There's workshops, there's a lot of speakers.
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We had Des Linden and I did a podcast episode on about it previously so you can take a listen to that, and in it I talked about how, on one of the morning runs that we had, I participated in a plogging event with Tina Muir.
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So plogging means picking up trash as you're running.
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So it kind of combines jogging and picking up trash from the Swedish configuration of that word.
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And we met early in the morning and Boston is very windy and it was kind of cold.
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But a group of us met and Tina Muir introduced us to the concept of plogging and she handed out trash bags.
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They could break down.
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These were biodegradable trash bags, which I don't think I've ever been aware of that they have those.
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I mean, maybe I did, but it it never really clocked, but these were biodegradable trash bags and everybody got one.
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We also got gloves.
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She handed out gloves and she is really big into sustainable running, so she goes to a lot of races.
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She was just at Boston.
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She goes to the New York Marathon, she goes all over and hosts these plugging events.
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But also she's interested in I don't know if you've ever seen, but they have these little water capsule things, I guess, and they're kind of covered in a skin that you can eat.
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So instead of having all of these paper cups which, if you've ever raced before and you've been around the water stations, it is just trash city Now they have volunteers that pick them up, but there's a lot of cups and a lot of things going into the landfills, and so there have been these water companies that have designed these little water things that you pop in your mouth.
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She also promotes running with reusable cups.
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But the plogging event really attracted a lot of people and they had talked about having paces, like picking what pace you were going to run and having pacers.
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But, as she explained and as we found out, if you're going to go plogging, you're really not getting a run in, like you're not going to go out for a 16 mile run if you're, you know, training for a marathon, carrying a garbage bag and picking up garbage as you go along.
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It would be a very talented person that could run whatever pace they wanted and bend down and pick trash and put it in a garbage bag and have that all be smoothly.
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I would land on my face, so it's a very slow, you kind of jog and then pick up garbage, as you see it.
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So a group of us went out and just started running and she had a root and so we we kind of followed her around this root and as we were running we would see garbage and just pick it up and put it in our garbage bag.
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Now what was hilarious sort of was that it was so windy that keeping that garbage bag open without all the garbage already in it flying out was just it was difficult.
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So there were times that a lot of us were actually re-putting in the garbage bag things that we had already picked up.
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Now one thing that stood out to me that really surprised me were the amount of cigarette butts that were all over the streets.
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Growing up in the 70s and 80s, where smoking was, everybody smoked.
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It seemed like, you know, you went to a restaurant and they had you just smoked in the restaurant and then they started having non-smoking sections and smoking sections, but obviously the smoking section would waft over and then states slowly started rolling out that you couldn't smoke in restaurants.
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Because of all of that, I didn't realize how many people still actually smoked cigarettes Now.
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I live in a city and so it is much more prevalent to see someone smoking weed.
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I live in New York and so it's legal here.
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There's much more smelling weed than seeing people smoking.
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I maybe see a couple of people every so often smoking, but it's just.
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I didn't realize how much of a thing it still was, but with the amount of cigarette butts that were all over the ground it's like, oh, a lot of people still smoke.
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So that was really surprising to me.
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The amount of clothing that we found and picked up was also very surprising to me, and the amount of glass was.
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There was a lot of glass and a lot of alcohol containers like little, tiny little bottles of vodka or whatever.
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So we I think we ran.
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I want to say it was like a mile and a half.
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We'd run a little bit and then we'd all stop and go on both sides of the street and pick up the garbage.
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And the other thing that was surprising to me was how many people drivers like honked their horns and waved and really encouraged us and you know there were people yelling out way to go and just yelling.
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The amount of support that we got while doing this was also very surprising to me.
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I don't know why.
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I didn't expect that, but I didn't, and it was really cool to be a part of that and have people really appreciate that we were cleaning up this section of Boston.
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We wound our way around the route and when we got back, we took pictures with all the garbage that we collected and we collected a lot.
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Now we still left a lot, obviously, but we did collect a lot.
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So it was a really cool way to be a sustainable runner to clean up a section of a city that we were all there for a convention and also make new friends.
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I was able to talk to Tina later on, after a talk that she had given with a couple of other people about sustainable running, and she was just the nicest person and I've been listening to her since 2018, I think 2018, I think she was one of the first podcasts I ever listened to and really encouraged me, like as I was running and that was the start of my marathon training, and so she was in my ears like for miles and miles and miles.
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So it was just really cool to meet her and she is very dedicated to making running more sustainable.
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I've done some thinking as I've run now after doing that event, because there's a section here in Buffalo that I run through and it's like the garbage men actually opened the trash and just dumped it all over the place and the thing that I've noticed in a lot of cities is there are no garbage cans.
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So she had encouraged everybody that, even if on a regular run, if you just pick up one piece of trash instead of stepping over it as you're running, like if you notice a garbage can and there's trash and you're running, pick up a couple of pieces and throw it out.
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Now, be careful about what you're picking up.
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You know we had gloves.
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I tend to, especially since COVID, not pick up things like cups or things that are people use, that could have saliva on them.
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I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, I don't know the science behind how long something has to live and all that stuff.
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So, but I do tend to not do that.
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But there's other garbage that I will pick up and throw out.
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But the thing is, a lot of these places don't have garbage cans.
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So that was just this, this real thing that stuck out to me as I was running through this one section there are no garbage cans.
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Probably the thing is they would get filled up, overflow and then you'd still have a trash problem.
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But I mean, nail it down Like I don't know, I don't know what the answer is.
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It's just surprising to me how few garbage cans that I see in some sections of my town.
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It was just a really cool experience and I encourage you to seek this out.
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So she's at a lot of major things, even if you are not running a race, say you know, say she does Chicago in the fall, chicago Marathon, even if you're not running that race.
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Look at the events section, see if she's doing a plugging section and go try it out.
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You know, get a run in.
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It's not going to be fast, it's not going to be what we would call a training run, but it's going to be, as a runner, something that you can do.
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I'd be very surprised if it doesn't make you feel good about that run and about yourself and go and participate in this.
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You can meet somebody who is very passionate about running.
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Tina Muir was an elite runner.
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It's just really cool to meet her and talk to her, and so you get to meet somebody who was an elite runner and who was really good in her field.
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I was actually very surprised when I saw her pictures from the Boston Marathon event.
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There were less people there than at our event and that really surprised me.
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So, even if you are not going to run an event and you live in that town, look up the different events and the different things that they have surrounding the marathon or the half marathon or the 5k or whatever.
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See what you can do to get involved as a runner, and it doesn't necessarily have to be plogging, but there are other things where you can get involved or do that will help.
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You feel like you are part of the running community in your town or in your city.
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So one thing that she does advocate is the picking up of just one piece of trash on each run.
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Now, if every runner did that, we could make a difference in our towns and in our cities, wherever we are Now.
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The Buffalo Marathon is going to be happening in a month-ish, so I see a ton of runners.
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There's a 5K, a half marathon and a marathon all on the same weekend, so there are a lot of people a marathon all on the same weekend, so there are a lot of people in Buffalo who are training for that.
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So this time of year especially because it's April, so we're finally seeing some nice weather and everyone's not on their treadmills If everybody who was running right now in Buffalo just picked up one piece of trash and threw it out, we could make a little bit of a difference.
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Maybe not a huge difference where everyone's going to notice it, but at least we would feel that in ourselves.
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Now I run five times a week.
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That's five pieces of trash.
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I probably see a hundred runners a week.
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If they're running five times a week, that's 500, and with mine, five pieces of trash picked up throughout the week.
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We can make a difference, even if it's little.
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And what I learned when people were encouraging us from their cars is maybe if somebody sees you doing that, you're going to encourage someone else who isn't even a runner, to pick up that piece of trash and throw it out.
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If you're in a running group and you're interested in plogging, or even if you're not and you're interested in plogging, plug in the name of your town and plogging and see if there is a plogging group near you.
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I did that and was actually surprised to find out that there is an urban run series in my town and they actually do do a plogging run.
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It was just super surprising to me that they have this.
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I am always surprised as a runner when I see like a 5k going on in the town or I see somebody like a running group that I don't know about it.
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But I looked it up and we do have a running group in our town that does runs and they also do plogging runs.
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I'm really interested in that.
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If you're interested in starting something up yourself, you can email me at sherry at wrinkledrunnercom and I will try to look into information for you on how to get that started.
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I don't have information that I can spew out right now, but if you are interested in starting that, I can do the research for you and see if I can find a way for you to get that started in your town.