Armed with gloves, metal tongs and plastic rubbish sacks, hordes of determined litter-pickers will descend on Hackney Marshes in east London this weekend.
Spogomi, a Japanese litter-picking sport, has come to the UK. Invented in 2008, it was intended as a competition to encourage people to clean up public spaces. It is now played in schools across the country as people gamify collecting rubbish.
Sarah Parry, a 29-year-old doctor from Glasgow, is part of the reigning world champion team. The British team beat the Japanese in Tokyo in 2023, the last time the competition was held, when she and her two teammates managed to bag 61lbs (28kg) more rubbish than the host country.
The teams have 45 minutes to collect as much litter as possible, then 20 minutes to sort their litter. Teams are awarded points based on the type of litter and its recycling category.
Parry is competitive and has run 33 marathons, so when she stumbled across this sport by chance after her brother saw an advertisement for it, she got a team together and signed up to go to Japan.
Members of the Japan team carrying plastic bags of rubbish during the final stage of the Spogomi World Cup in 2023. Photograph: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
“We are not avid litter-picker-uppers in our free time – it was luck, competitiveness and enthusiasm more than anything else,” she said.
Parry will be in Hackney picking up litter this Sunday, but is not allowed to compete officially because the winners of the previous competition are not allowed to win in consecutive years. She is just doing it to see how much litter she can bag up.
Litter-picking may sound like a peaceful pursuit, but it can be strenuous.
“It is very physically difficult,” Parry said. “I have run 33 marathons and the sorest my legs have ever been is after winning the Spogomi World Cup two years ago.
“It’s a lot of very fast walking and you are carrying a lot of awkward-shaped items and using different muscle groups, and it’s heavy litter and it was very hot in Tokyo when we competed. We collected over 50kg so you have to carry that between you while power-walking through a busy urban area.”
Players in costume competing at spogomi in Tokyo this year. Photograph: Takashi Aoyama/Getty Images
Parry said spogomi was unlike any other sport: “It is very fun. You don’t often get the chance to play sport in a busy urban area where the people around you don’t know or understand what you are doing and why you are so excited to spot a glass bottle.”
But more seriously, she said, it drew attention to a very important issue: the blight of litter plaguing Britain’s streets.
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“It is shocking how much there is. We realised we are walking around constantly blind to this litter problem. When you notice it, it’s all you can see. I see it everywhere now, I just constantly see litter. It just opens your eyes to it.”
Though the sport was conceived in Japan, she says the country has far less of a litter problem than the UK: “The UK is so much dirtier than Japan because I guess in Japan there is a very altruistic community where people care about their environment. They have more respect in their culture than they do in the UK.”
Because of this, she hopes it can become a more popular sport in the UK so people start caring more about litter.
The UK team celebrating their World Cup victory. Photograph: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
“It’s a shame it’s not a more well-known sport in the UK. I am somebody who didn’t pick up litter before this and it now gets me into a different mindset of how I view litter. Thats what’s really nice about the sport,” Parry said.
“What spogomi does is tap into people who aren’t eco-minded, turns it into a game, makes it competitive. I pick up more litter than I did before.”
Parry has some pointers for the competitors this year: “My tips would be: taking it seriously, viewing it as a sport, being competitive and pushing yourself are important. If you are dawdling around picking up litter you’re not going to win. Just because it’s litter-picking doesn’t mean you can’t push your body physically.”
