The latest iteration of running for a cause
Outside Magazine
March 8, 2018
By Martin Fritz Huber
For several summers in my early twenties, I took an 18-hour train trip from Vienna, Austria, where I lived, to Copenhagen. The best part of the journey came toward the end. Not long after Hamburg, the train boards a ferry to cross a short stretch of the Baltic Sea, and you can briefly go up to the outer deck and see the wind farms off the Danish coast. The first time I noticed those pinwheeling turbines on the horizon, it looked like a kind of paradise.
Ever since, I’ve thought of Scandinavia as a futuristic Eden of progressive environmentalism. Hence, I wasn’t at all surprised when, last week, my editor made me aware of the new craze from Sweden called “plogging.”
Plogging does seem to be making inroads here in the United States. The anti-littering nonprofit Keep America Beautiful has been spreading the word on its website, and local plogging groups are starting to proliferate. There was even a plogging event in Denver at Outdoor Retailer in January, led by none other than ür-plogger Erik Ahlström.