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Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
Alexandria resident Emily Wright picks up trash along the Potomac River.
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Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
Dozens of bits of plastic and other litter can be seen among the leaves, sticks and snail shells in the ground along the Potomac River shoreline.
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Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
Single-use plastics are among the most commonly found litter along the Potomac River shore.
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Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
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Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
Small bits of plastic and styrofoam are most common along the Potomac River shoreline, but sometimes large or odd objects show up — like this old, deflated basketball.
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Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
Wright carries litter to Alexandria recycling and trash bins and separates out anything that can be recycled. The bags she uses are biodegradable.
Alexandria resident Emily Wright walked down to the shoreline of the Potomac River in North Old town, wearing compostable gloves and carrying a degradable garbage bag. She picked up cigarette butts, bits of Styrofoam, a car oil bottle (empty), bottle caps, pieces of unidentifiable plastic and fast food wrappers.
Lunging, bending and holding yoga-like poses, plogging turns out be a pretty good workout. The term plogging comes from the phrase “plocka upp,” which means “pick up” in Swedish, and jogging — thus, plogging.
For an increasing number of people here in Alexandria, plogging is a creative, civic-minded way to get exercise.
Wright, who lives two blocks from the river, said she has seen joggers run intervals between picking up litter and depositing it in a nearby trash can. She has also seen women walking in groups carrying long-handled trash grabbers. (Wright strongly recommends compostable gloves or gardening gloves, and recycles as much of the litter as she can. She washes up with plenty of soap and hot water as soon as she gets home.)
More than once on a recent afternoon, Wright had a look of disgust on her face from a bad smell or a particularly questionable object. Tampon applicators and bags of dog poop are the worst, she noted.
For Wright, plogging is much more about picking up trash that can harm animals and the environment than it is about getting a workout. The health benefits of getting her heart rate up are just a bonus.
Wright moved to the East Coast from Southern California to go to school to study the cognitive neuroscience of music. While studying, she started cleaning up the closest inlet to her home in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. From there, Wright started learning about (and loving) the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
The Potomac River’s water quality has improved in the past several years, moving from a grade of D in 2011 to a B- in the most recent (2016) State of the Nation’s River Report from the Potomac Conservancy. The top three pollutants in the Potomac, according to the Potomac Conservancy, are nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment — all are on the decline. But urban water runoff is getting worse, and Alexandria has plenty of that.
“When rainwater washes over paved surfaces and rooftops, it carries harmful toxins, chemicals, and debris into local streams. This is called polluted urban runoff. At high volumes, runoff can also erode stream banks and dump harmful levels of sediment into our waterways,” according to the Potomac Conservancy.
In addition, all those pieces of plastic that end up in the river leach out toxins and chemicals — there isn’t enough research yet to determine how living in such pollution is affecting fish, turtles, snakes and ducks.
When she moved to Alexandria last year, she continued picking up waste along the Potomac River. She’ll go out to pick up for at least an hour a day every other day. She also skates for exercise and does some jogging. As long as it’s not snowing or excessively hot, she’ll go out.
Wright, who is a cellist and a writer, has a flexible schedule allowing her to plog. For people with more routine, 9-to-5 jobs, she recommends doing it while out for a morning or evening run.
“There’s a meditative quality to it,” she said. “It’s like a compulsion for me. I can’t stop if I see it. It can be really gross, but you have to ask: what’s worse? Dealing with someone else’s trash for a moment or letting it enter the watershed forever?”
