PORTLAND (NEWS CENTER Maine) -- Look up "plogging" on the internet and Urban Dictionary will tell you it’s blogging, but only with pictures. So pretty much, Instagram. But it also means something else: an activity that can get your quads burning and your heart racing and help save the planet, all at the same time.
“It’s an activity originated in Sweden," said Chuck Wilcoxen, director of Team Long Run. "The original 'plogger' must have been out for a run, saw something some litter and thought ‘oh I’ll pick that up.’”
Chuck Wilcoxen is the director of Team Long Run, an organization that inspires kids to exercise. It even has a program called “race in a box” that will ship you everything you need to hold your own race, complete with t-shirts and cones.
Wilcoxen wanted to bring plogging to the Portland area.
“It’s like running but you have the additional benefit of doing like a little lunge every time you pick something up," he said. “So the Swedes went ahead and hooked people up with heart rate monitors and did the sport science testing and it determined that plogging was actually better for you than jogging.”
To plan a "plogathon" he teamed up with Friends of Casco Bay. It's happening, weather permitting, Thursday July 26 at Bug Light Park form 6-7 p.m. The concept: a coastal clean-up combined with exercise.
Sarah Lyman, Community Engagement Coordinator for Friends of Casco Bay, says it’s important to pick up plastic around the water considering they just tested samples from the bay and discovered something invisible to the naked eye: microfibers.
“They are small pieces of plastic that come from a lot of different things, sometimes from the clothes we wear or other plastic based products,” she said. “You would never know that those fibers are in the water.”