There’s a word for those noble souls who’re picking up litter while they jog. They’re ploggers. The neologisms plogger and plogging are a combination of the English word jogging and Swedish plocka upp, which means pick up. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Ploggers”
A lot of neologisms are just here today and gone tomorrow, but this one I hope sticks around. It’s plogging. Have you run into this one? Plumbers blogging? I don’t know what that is. Plogging? No, but it is a portmanteau. It’s a combination of a Swedish term, plakaup, which means to pick up, and jogging. So this is this craze that’s now making its way through Europe.
So you jog and pick up trash?
Yes.
Okay. Do you have the grabby hands? That’d be the best part of it, right? The long ones with the levers and they have the little claws, the pincers on the ends?
Yeah, that would look really cool coming down the street. But apparently there are all these people in Europe who are running down the street with plastic bags and pausing to either squat, which would be really good for you, or bend over and pick up trash. And they’re plogging groups here in the U.S., apparently. And I read about a group in Tennessee that has trasher size.
So picking up trash while you jog or exercise.
Yeah.
Sounds perfect.
Yeah. Maybe hikers. I don’t know. Maybe we go pliking. I don’t know.
It reminds me of David Sedaris picking up trash in the U.K. where he lives. And I remember there was a story in one of the local papers about the local man who picks up trash that he didn’t happen to mention, but he was incredibly well known. No mention of that, really.
Yeah, exactly. You know, I said that I hope that plugging has a long life, that this idea has legs, but actually, I hope it only lasts as long as people stop throwing trash out the car windows.
Until they do. 877-929-9673.
