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SpoGomi – How Japan Turned Collecting Trash Into a Competitive Sport

SpoGomi, a combination of 'sport' and 'gomi' (Japanese for rubbish) is a popular competition in which teams of 3-5 people try to pick up the most trash.

www.odditycentral.com

SpoGomi, a combination of ‘sport’ and ‘gomi’ (Japanese for rubbish) is a popular competition in which teams of 3-5 people try to pick up the most trash of the highest quality in a set period of time.

Japan recently announced that it would host the first SpoGomi World Cup in November of 2023, with teams from all over the world scouring the streets of Tokyo in search of trash to pick up. Each team of three players will have 60 minutes to gather the most trash from a designated area while trying to sort it correctly into color-coded bags for each type (burnable waste, recyclable plastic, metal cans, etc.). When the time is up, the trash will be weighted and checked for proper sorting, and the team with the most trash wins. In case of a tie, the winner is determined by the quality of the trash, with points awarded by type (cigarette butts win the most points).

I recently came across this news, and thought it was a cool idea. A bit counter intuitive though when you have teams flying in from other countries to compete. Still though, at least things are getting cleaned up. I was thoroughly impressed by how clean everything was in Tokyo for being such a major city, but then as you go west to Osaka, there is a bit more trash. Beijing and Seoul were pretty clean as well when I was there, which makes me think poorly about DC. Do you do any community service? What was the last thing you did? Pay it forward, Gaf