Be sure to do your plogging duties to keep landscape beautiful

Eating healthy, losing weight and getting in shape is always near the top of my New Year’s resolution list. Despite my best efforts, I struggle to stick to my guns — but all hope is not lost.

Earth Day 2025 was celebrated on Tuesday, and that is a great starting point for a fairly new outdoor activity for all ages.

Loving to be outdoors, I’ve found the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Having a deep respect for the landscape and environment, plogging is the perfect way to benefit not only my health but beautify the landscape by picking up unsightly litter along the way.

Here’s a trend that has remained popular worldwide.

It began in Sweden and is called plogging, which is a combination of the word “jogging” and the Swedish term “plocka upp,” which means “pick up.”

Sources credit environmentalist Erik Ahlstrom as organizing the Facebook group, Plogga, which has members worldwide. On Twitter and Instagram, you are seeing more posts including the #plogging hashtag.

As for me, I’ll coin the term, plolking, right here and now — for the walkingwhile- picking-up-litter experience.

All you need for plogging is a pair of walking or running shoes and a bag. Then, you can be a trail-trash warrior.

Your choice of an area to beautify, or plog, is up to you, whether it be your neighborhood, a local park or a larger public space — like a state park nature trail.

The winds have helped overturn trash cans and spread the mess. Of course, litterbugs still abound even with the best education efforts.

Besides the carrying of a bag, there’s special equipment such as a belt which will help tote your bags as you jog or walk.

After reading an article written by Matthew Levine on www.menshealth. com, I am ready to give it a try.

“I plogged for about 45 minutes, and my app said I burned 352 calories,” Levine, who lives in New York City, said in his article. “Plus, compared to my previous runs, when I focused primarily on leg soreness and shortness of breath, I was in a lot less pain because I was so focused on the trash in front of me. It felt good to sort through the six gallons of garbage that I’d gathered during my run and take it to be recycled.”

There’s a Facebook group in the United States, called “Plogging America,” inspired by a young man named Hamza Atilgan of Boston.

Boston, a.k.a. “Beantown,” hopes to host a national plogging event soon. Plogging America features Atilgan’s own video clip plus a story about plogging, which aired on “Good Morning America” a couple of years ago.

Yes, there’s even a Facebook group in our area called “Plogging Oklahoma.”

There are several apps for your phone geared to plogging and recording your progress.. The key features of most apps will allow you to log your plogs, see who else is plogging and earn points and badges. For cities, parks and volunteer groups, it will identify areas that need cleaning up and track volunteer activities. Businesses will be able to offer specials, promote their business and support nearby ploggers.

“The Keep America Beautiful” campaign and website is involving ploggers in their effort to clean up our nation. The organization has partnered with Lifesum, the first health app to allow its 25 million users to log, track and estimate the number of calories burned while plogging, to turn the emerging trend into a habit.

Every municipality should seek to get a chapter established. Springtime festivals usually have a campaign that precedes the event to spiff up before tourists arrive.

What could be better than the good feeling you will get by working out at your own pace and cleaning up the earth at the same time? This is an opportunity to teach our children to care for our planet.

In a state that is rich in natural resources, why not enhance Oklahoma’s wellness of its citizens at the same time as preserving the landscape?

Make America clean again. Plog on.

• • • John Kilgore is the former Greenleaf State Park manager. He can be reached by e-mailing him at jkilgoreoutdoors@yahoo.com.