‘The sorest my legs have ever been’: hordes to descend on Hackney for litter-picking world cup | Waste

Armed with gloves, metal pliers and plastic garbage bags, hordes of determined litter pickers will descend on Hackney marshes in eastern London this weekend.

SPOGOMI, a Japanese litter selection sport, came to the United Kingdom. Invented in 2008, it was intended for a competition to encourage people to clean up public spaces. It is now played in schools across the country while people gamify by collecting waste.

Sarah Parry, a 29 -year -old Glasgow doctor, is part of the reigning world champion team. The British team beat the Japanese in Tokyo in 2023, the last time the competition took place, when it and its two teammates managed to put 61 pounds (28 kg) more than the host country.

The teams have 45 minutes to collect as much litter as possible, then 20 minutes to sort their scope. The teams receive points depending on the type of litter and its recycling category.

Parry is competitive and ran 33 marathons, so when she tripped on this sport by chance after her brother saw an advertisement for this, she gathered a team and registered to go to Japan.

“We are not passionate about litter-Picker-Uppers during our free time-it was more luck, competitiveness and enthusiasm than anything else,” she said.

Parry will be in Hackney who picks up the litter this Sunday, but is not authorized to compete officially because the winners of the previous competition are not allowed to win during the consecutive years. She does it right to see the amount of litter that she can bag.

Litter picking may seem a peaceful prosecution, but it can be painful.

“It’s very difficult physically,” said Parry. “I ran 33 marathons and the most dead that my legs have ever been after winning the World Cup Spogomi two years ago.

“It is a lot of very fast walking and you wear a lot of clumsy items and use different muscle groups, and it is a heavy litter and it was very hot in Tokyo when we have contributed. We collected more than 50 kg, so you have to wear this between you while browsing an animated urban area.”

Parry said that Spogomi was different from any other sport: “It’s very fun. You don’t often have the chance to play sports in an animated urban area where people around you do not know or do not understand what you are doing and why you are so excited to spot a glass bottle.”

But more seriously, she said, it drew attention to a very important problem: the burn of the litter that rages in the British streets.

“It’s shocking how there is. We realized that we are constantly blind to this litter problem.

Although sport has been designed in Japan, it says that the country has much less litter problem than the United Kingdom: “The United Kingdom is so dirty than Japan because I suppose that in Japan, there is a very altruistic community where people care about their environment. They have more respect in their culture than in the United Kingdom. ”

For this reason, she hopes that it can become a more popular sport in the United Kingdom so that people start to worry more about the litter.

“It is a shame that it is not a better known sport in the United Kingdom. I am someone who has not picked up a litter before that and it now brings me to a different state of mind from the way I see the litter. This is what is really nice in sport,” said Parry.

“What Spogomi does is drawing on people who are not with an ecological spirit, transforming it into play, makes it competitive. I pick up more litter than before.”

Parry has some advice for competitors this year: “My advice would be: taking it seriously, seeing it as a sport, being competitive and pushing you is important. If you strive to collect litter, you will not win. It is not because the litter picking does not mean that you cannot push your body physically. ”