Surrey looking to encourage people to walk more, points to ‘plogging’ as solution

SURREY (NEWS 1130) — Have you heard of Plogging?

A city councillor in Surrey wants people to get outside and exercise by taking part in the Swedish fitness trend.

Have you heard of Plogging? Surrey city councillor Laurie Guerra wants people to get outside & exercise by taking part in the Swedish fitness trend. It's a combination of jogging & picking up trash & could be a unique option when it comes to staying active @NEWS1130

— Tarnjit Kaur Parmar (@Tarnjitkparmar) May 12, 2021

Plogging is a combination of jogging and picking up litter. The trend originated in Sweden a few years ago and quickly picked up in popularity across the world.

Councillor Laurie Guerra is behind a push to get the city to look at what can be done to encourage people to get outside and walk more.

“I used to teach fitness, I was a professional dancer, and I have always been active and promoting health is just everything that I’m about,” she says.

“I walk quite a bit in our city parks on a daily basis as much as I can get out. I wanted to put a campaign together and have the city research options to increase promotion and engagement opportunities, just to encourage walking as a healthy activity and develop strategies to connect community members to walk together, perhaps through discussion boards or even being able to connect to Facebook groups.”

She says with plogging picking up in popularity, it could be an engaging option for different groups in Surrey, and could also be a way to help keep the city clean from litter and trash.

“It’s a development that came about in Scandinavian countries and it’s a combination of jogging and picking up trash,” she says.

“So, it could be a combination of walking and picking up trash, and I thought that would be a great, just an initiative to pull everything together and being able to get out, enjoy the parks, the fresh air, healthy activity and at the same time clean up our city.”

Given the pandemic, some may be wary of returning to a traditional gym setting, with outdoor exercise encouraged. Guerra says plogging could be a safer option, especially for older people. She adds the next steps include involving the city’s Parks, Rec and Culture committee.

“It’ll be put towards the Parks, Rec and Culture committee which I am the chair of, and they will look at doing some research and look at options in order to put all this together, see what’s existing now in the city as far as walking groups or litter picking up groups,” Guerra says.

“See how we can use it with our campaign which is already in existence, the ‘Love Where You Live’ campaign, and perhaps put the two of them together just to do everything that we said that we wanted to do to increase those social connections, as well as cleaning up our city and getting healthy to boot.”