'Plogging' 50 Indian cities in 50 days; all for a cleaner India

Plogging, Swedish trend of jogging and picking up litter, is fast catching up with Indians. Ripu Daman Belvi, an engineer who works for an MNC in Delhi, has embarked on this ambitious pan-India plogging mission.

The objective is to cover 50 Indian cities from the Southern end until up North, spreading awareness about 'plogging' and the importance of reducing ones plastic usage to a bare minimum, while ensuring that plastic is disposed of properly.

The plogging run started on September 5 in Kochi, and Belvi and his team has so far covered Madurai, Salem, Coimbatore, Puducherry, Chennai. They aim to cover major cities across India ranging from Bangalore, Vijayawada, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Agra, all the way up to Jammu before it concludes in New Delhi.

Belvi said, "As a marathon runner I've seen how our cities look early in the morning when there are fewer people and vehicles. The road are filled with plastic and trash. I made it a daily practice to clean the trash that's left behind by other people. Our city is our responsibility, and this needs to be firmly established in the minds of our fellow citizens"

He further added, "In our running group, we introduced plogging as an exercise after long-distance runs. Initially, our group was called 'My city, My responsibility' and later we changed it to 'Ploggers of India'.

So far their team has conducted over 300 plogging drives across 21 Indian cities with the aid of several Facebook groups that bring together runners in the respective cities. They also encourage participants to pledge to stop littering and move away from single-use plastic. "In the last week, we have collected over 400 kg of waste and nearly 200 people have joined us in different cities. We plog for about 7-15 hours a day depending on the conditions and later we drive to the next city to carry on the work there," Belvi said.

Zee Media Newsroom