Plogging and environmental talk

8 June 2019

Volunteer activity today with Kompis Sverige - plogging - Sweden's next trend to save Mother Nature, an activity that combines jogging and collecting rubbish together. In Swedish, to collect rubbish is plocka soppor and jogging is joggning. So, plo and -ggning = ploggning, and the English version is plogging. It was warm at 26 degrees today. Extremely great to be outside. We met in front of Nordiska Museet and was greeted by Erik Ahlstrom, the founder of Plogga.  

Erik began by introducing the concept of plogging and the 5 reasons to plogging which you can see in Plogga website. We started by removing our shoes to feel our feet on the grass, and did a little of warm up. Then, he distributed plastic bags for us to collect rubbish. We did a 25-minute plogging where I collected lots of cigarette butts. According to Erik, there are 3 million cigarette butts thrown on the ground everyday. That is a lot of cigarettes smoked in a day!  

One of the participants took my photo when I carried out my duties as a volunteer. First time that anyone took a photo of me while I am on my volunteer duties.

This is me taking the group photo. We need to take a group photo prior to the start of the activity.

After plogging, we went to Fotografiska Museet (The Museum of Photography) where we will listen to a talk on climate change. The talk started at 2pm, so we had an hour to spare as we arrived at 1pm. I explored a bit on the exhibition in the museum. I have not stepped inside this building before as the entrance fee costs SEK165! There was an exhibition on the rubbish in the sea. It was terrible.

We gathered at the hall at 2pm. We listened to a speech by the British Commissioner, two entrepreneurs on the products they produced from environmental waste. Then, Erik gave a speech and thanked us for being a part of plogging today.

The event finished by 3.15pm and I hurried to the Malaysian Embassy for some Malaysian food from the Raya Open House, as the Open House event will end by 4.30pm! Yes, I chose plogging over Malaysian food.