Daventry Plogging Championships

DRR are a local community-based running club with around 200 members which encourages adults of all abilities and fitness levels to come along and join in.

DLW have a team of volunteers who are dedicated to doing their bit for the community and planet.

Plogging is a combination of jogging with picking up litter, merging the Swedish verbs plocka upp (pick up) and jogga (jog) gives the new Swedish verb plogga, from which the word plogging derives. It started as an organised activity in Sweden around 2016 and spread to other countries in 2018, following increased concern about plastic pollution. As a workout, it provides variation in body movements by adding bending, squatting and stretching to the main action of running, hiking, or walking. An estimated 2,000,000 people plog daily in 100 countries and some plogging events have attracted over 3,000,000 participants. [source: Wikipedia]

The purpose of this event was to create a positive environmental, social and wellbeing impact by combining improving our local area through collecting litter and encouraging exercise by highlighting the benefits of being part of a structured running club environment.

DRR sponsored the supply of litter pickers for this event and the Wombles ongoing picking activities.

It was a fun event with some gentle competition between the teams to see who could cover the most distance and fill the most rubbish bags. Well done to Samantha and Tracy who collected the heaviest amount of rubbish, the volume of rubbish collected by all the teams was quite similar.

As a result, the combined teams filled several rubbish bags removing a considerable amount of litter and detritus from areas that are used for social benefit including our Country Park, Daventry Parkrun course route, walking areas, car parks, many pedestrian routes used by our local population and our countryside borders.

The Wombles work continues all year round with opportunities to get involved. The intention is to make the Daventry Plogging Championships a regular event.

DLW make arrangements with the Local Authority to collect the filled rubbish bags following litter picking and plogging activities.