The Eastern Rhode Island Conservation District (ERICD) has championed expanding its Earth Day celebration to span the entire month of April, and this month-long grass-roots celebration includes multiple free volunteer opportunities for the public to help keep trash out of the local environment and ending up in waterways. Sara Churgin, District Manager for ERICD, said, “During the pandemic, we started an independent trash pickup – also known as plogging. Every year we have expanded on this and our Earth Month community has grown to what it is today.”
To some people, plogging (picking up trash while walking or jogging) may not sound like fun or feel like it would make much impact when you are just one person, but that’s not the impression you would gather from the smiling faces of this year’s Earth Month plogging events. For those new to the term, plogging is any combination of walking or running while picking up trash. It started in Sweden and is a combination of the English “jogging” and the Swedish “plocka upp.”
Over the last few years, the Eastern Rhode Island Conservation District (ERICD) has leveraged existing partnerships to grow its Earth Month outreach and overall impact through yearly plogging events that serve to both clean up and inspire the community through ongoing environmental action that is both fun and makes a huge impact. This year, ERICD offered three different plogging opportunities in April alone for the public to join in the community action for cleaning up Rhode Island for Earth Month. ERICD Board Member, Jessica Cullinan, said, “ERICD is a small organization with just a few staff members. A lot of our events are led by volunteers and board members so it’s really impressive the impact we have been able to have. We are so thankful to all of our volunteers and funders who make what we do possible.” Cullinan has led the organization’s plogging efforts over the last few years. All the ERICD Earth Month plogging events are made possible with generous donations of supplies by Keep Nature Wild and the Low Impact Alliance.
The ERICD Earth Month Ploggers really hit the ground running at the first clean up event of the month, which was the Plog Newport on April 13, where roughly 45 volunteers worked as a team to plog along the Rhode Races Newport Marathon course. “Rhode Races does a fabulous job at reducing race trash and calls our team in for what doesn’t make it to the trash buckets” says Cullinan. It is important to note that not all of the trash collected on April 13 is from the race, but also includes a lot of pre-race trash and the plogging volunteers often go above and beyond cleaning up areas surrounding the course. Together, the Plog Newport volunteers picked up over 200 lbs of trash, and despite some wind, rain, and even hail- these ploggers ended the day with huge smiles on their faces and a sense of accomplishment in serving their community.
There was a second coastal plog at Fogland Beach in Tiverton on Sunday April 21 where over 20 volunteers plogged the length of Fogland and Neck Roads in Tiverton in celebration of Earth Day weekend. Over 150 lbs of trash was picked up at Fogland Beach and surrounding roads by walkers and joggers. Of the 150 lbs picked up, at least 20 lbs of the total was sorted to recycling, proving that ERICD’s ploggers are always willing to go the extra mile when it comes to protecting our environment. Plog Tiverton was organized in partnership with the Tiverton Litter Committee and the Farmcoast Run Club.
Cheery faces abound and the positive energy is always high at all the Earth Month plogging events, and that is especially true at Plog & Chug Newport, the third and final plogging event for Earth Month. Held on Thursday, April 25, a group of over fifty joggers picked up over 247 pounds of litter in Newport. The event was in partnership with Newport Run and Chug, an active running club community that meets weekly for jogs around the city. This Thursday was designated as “plogging” night for ERICD’s Earth Month and Aquidneck Island Earth Week.
Cullinan said, “Our hope is to make plogging something fun that people will consider doing all year long.” Prior to the start of the event, the goal was to collect a total of 101 pounds of trash to hit a Keep Nature Wild lifetime impact total of 1,000 lbs collected, and the volunteers succeeded in exceeding that goal by many miles. The inspired community action of the combined plogging events this Earth Month led to ERICD’s new Keep Nature Wild impact total of 1,146.46 lbs of trash collected to date.
Source: Eastern Rhode Island Conservation District