Environmental Benefit of Plogging
1. Protecting our Wildlife and Ecosystem
By clean up the litters, we could help animals prevent from injury and death by eating litter accidently, at the same time, it also reduces the pollution to soil and water by litters. By this could protect the habitat of wildlife and the food-chain in the Earth which could protect the ecosystem.
2. Strengthen recycling and reduce the waste of resources
The plogging activity which focusing on recyclables could help to collect the litters which could recycle, for examples, plastic bottles and metal cans. By this way, plogging could help on recycling, strengthen the circular economy, reduce the waste of resources and prevent the pollution from recyclable litters.
3. Prevent Litters Damaging the Ocean Ecosystem
The sources of many ocean litters are from the land, therefore, plogging activity could help to reduce ocean litters which are coming from land. As a result, plogging is not only protecting the ecosystem of the land, but also protecting the ocean, reduce the threat of litters and microplastic to ocean species.
4. Maintain the City Appearance and Keep the Hygiene
Plogging as an activity which could adding in to the daily life, you could clean up the litters during your workout routine, walking and wandering. This could keep the hygiene of streets and creating a clean and beautiful Hong Kong. The reduction of the street litters could reduce the chance of the growth of infection disease and other pathogenic bacteria.
5. Plogging Activity is Flexible to Organise, Easier to Protect the Environment.
There are people think plogging is similar with trail clean up and beach clean up as those activities are also clean up the rubbish, especially trail clean up may also requires participants hiking while pick up the litters. However, compare with the activities mentioned, plogging is a activity which is relatively not limited by location and time, also you could playing the sport you affordable and by your preference while doing clean up, for example, you could do plogging while you running along the Shun Mun River, walking on the street or park, even during a cycling activity. You could plogging by yourself or you can plogging with others who love the same sport with you. Plogging is more flexible than trail clean up and beach clean up, which makes plogging easier to organise and protect the environment.
References
European Environment Agency. (2024, Jan 25). From source to sea — The untold story of marine litter. https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/european-marine-litter-assessment
Delavari Heravi, M., Haddadi, M., Karami Nejad, F., Izadi Yazdanabadi, Z., & Haghighat, G. A. (2024). A comparative study of indexes used for litter pollution assessment in urban and public environments. Heliyon, 10(3), e24954–e24954. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e24954
Hong Kong Sustainable Campus Consortium. (n.d.). Why is plastic waste a problem?. https://jcsccp.hk/lunchbox-lending-programme/plastic-waste-problem
Moeve. (2023, Oct 17). “Plogging”, or how to do sport while “cleaning” the planet. https://www.moeveglobal.com/en/planet-energy/environment/plogging-picking-up-litter-while-jogging
Plogging© Clean Trails©. (2024). What is Plogging?. https://www.plogging.org/what-is-plogging
Sustainable Lantau Office. (2024, May 3). Where does marine litter come from?. https://www.lantau.gov.hk/en/exploring-lantau/nature-conservation/eco-logs/treasure-our-nature/where-does-marine-litter-come-from/index.html
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