Meet plogger Karin Traeger, The Plastic Runner

Meet Karin Traeger, the face of The Plastic Runner and plogger.  For Karin, in the pre-plogging life, her moment of ta-da waste awareness came working as a diver on the Great Barrier Reef and finding herself amongst plastic litter about 60kms offshore.

“It was my first exposure to marine plastics. It was really bad. I had lots of fishing line, different plastic bags floating and I was like whoa, what the hell; 60kms from shore and you can find a plastic bag floating?”

When Karin moved to Melbourne a couple of years ago, she got back into the running scene she had started in 2012, stepping up her training for her biggest race, a 100km ultramarathon. She started noticing all the litter along the trails and began picking it up. The dots connected and she realised that this was the source of much of the rubbish that ends up in waterways and of the types of marine plastic she encountered while diving.

The plogging passion began; coincidentally around the same time as plogging, which began in Sweden about 2016, was catching on across the world as a new craze in 2018.

Plogging is a contraction of the Swedish words plocka upp meaning pick up, and jogging; which of course makes plogging. Not plodding, which creates a vision of ennui and slow struggle, but plogging which is fun exercise that helps the planet, boosts your spirits and gets your body moving!

Karin could see this was an activity that needed to be shared, not just because she was finding more rubbish than she could carry but because she believed that other people would feel good about getting together and picking up rubbish while exercising.

“I decided I could run an event every month and that’s going to be my way of saying thank you to the places I’m using for training.”

She was right. What started with an event of about 15 friends in early 2018, is now a fully blown website with social media, sponsorship by several companies and alignment with Clean Up Australia. Plus people from Australia and overseas seeking her help in doing events in their areas.

Something she hadn’t expected was the greater awareness of the waste issue that was created by the events.

“There’s a lot of behaviour change that happens after the events as well. People at the next events bringing a keep cup or a bottle and saying ‘I didn’t realise how many things I was using’, that they were kind of feeding to the problem. That’s been something I wasn’t really expecting people to do.”

Plogging is good for mental health and means people have the chance to give back to that natural space that maybe they have previously taken for granted. It also gives more motivation for walking if you can’t be bothered.

“If you’re going to go for a walk but you don’t feel like it, you can give it a different meaning, give it a higher meaning. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback on social media.”

People feel good contributing to a healthier planet, even if it’s just picking up a couple of pieces of litter, and being part of something bigger while getting outside and moving.

The Plastic Runner and events such as Clean Up Australia Day are a huge part of creating a waste solution, but community awareness, education, more innovation around manufacturing and packaging and stronger policies from governments are also essential spokes to the wheel.

One of the best things about plogging is thatyou don’t have to be a runner. Anyone of any ability or fitness level can participate. Get into it. Become - A PLOGGER.

Pru Saimoun is a freelance writer who believes inconnecting community through communication. She writes on waste, environment,art and community.