#Trashtag
We’ve all done stupid things in the name of a good viral hashtag. Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Or planking?
The #Trashtag seems a bit meaningless at first: is it a game of tag where you throw bits of rubbish at each other? Wouldn’t that make it more like trash dodgeball? Is it tagging people on social media as trashy?
Nope—it’s a clever slogan inspiring people to clean up their local environments.
42 Likes, 4 Comments - #trashtagchallenge (@_trashtagchallenge) on Instagram: "800+ volunteers cleaning up all this trash 🙌🏽👏🏽 amazing job @dont_mess_with_the_don 💚🌿 📌 Canada 🇨🇦..."
In one photo, a dog stands amongst piles of plastic debris. In the next, the dog stands in a pristine spot surrounded by full rubbish bags as proof of the work the owner put into cleaning up the area. This before-and-after concept has gone viral on social media, particularly on Reddit, and is gaining traction around the world.
It’s simple: take a photo of an area that needs some cleaning or maintenance, do something about it, and then take a photo of your results.
78 Likes, 5 Comments - Brittany (@s.e.r.e.n.d.i.p.t.y) on Instagram: "Another 9 bags from the field next to Petland, we've made some decent progress but there is still a..."
So far, people have cleaned up beaches, forests, roadsides, fields and much more as part of the challenge, alone and in huge teams, cleaning up a global mess.
Although #Trashtag has been around since 2015, when it was started by the outdoor gear company UCO, it’s taken off as part of a much broader movement of people learning about plastic pollution and taking action to fix it.
25 Likes, 0 Comments - #trashtagchallenge (@_trashtagchallenge) on Instagram: "Amazing job @abhinaybhandari 🙌🏽👏🏽🌿💚 📌 India 🇮🇳 . . Feel free to share your #trashtag posts with us..."
These photos are encouraging and the efforts are valiant in a world covered in rubbish. We produce a billion tons of waste annually and experts say the problem is likely to worsen exponentially. It’s admirable to delitter your local community, but once you’ve collected the plastic from your beach in England, what happens to it? You’d hope it’d be recycled, but not everything ends up in a recycling plant. Much of it is shipped overseas, particularly to China, where it is reused yes, but at huge environmental cost to get it there in the first place. A lot of it ends up in landfills or illegally dumped or burned.
Ellen MacArthur, sailor-turned-philanthropist, has championed for sustainability and dealing with the plastic crisis, and says ‘we cannot simply recycle or beach-clean our way out of the plastic pollution crisis. We must move upstream and tackle the flood at its source.’
35 Likes, 4 Comments - #trashtagchallenge (@_trashtagchallenge) on Instagram: "What an amazing cleanup by these high school students 😍🙌🏽🌿 @nicuesalodge 💚 📌 Costa Rica 🇨🇷 . . Feel..."
Banning single-use plastic is one great step forward but bans aren’t everything because the problem with plastics is not just a litter problem: it’s a pollution problem caused by big businesses and uninterested governments.
But, #Trashtag now has more than 98,000 posts on Instagram and hundreds of thousands more on Facebook and Twitter. People from countries all over the world are taking part in the challenge proving both that plastic is an epidemic and that people are inspired to make a change, even at the smallest, most local level.
41 Likes, 4 Comments - #trashtagchallenge (@_trashtagchallenge) on Instagram: "@naturehikelebanon with a great message 🙌🏽💚🌍 📌 Lebanon 🇱🇧 . . Feel free to share your #trashtag..."
Hopefully, this campaign will lead to fundamental changes at the production level as people clean up their environments and grow frustrated with continuously contributing to the pollution. Change is coming. Critics may say it shouldn’t take an online challenge to get people to look after their environments, but anything that can inspire people to care about the planet can only be a good thing. ■
Sustainability
Back to the start
Single-use plastic is now undoubtedly passé and plastic straws are the latest disposable commodity to find themselves in the firing line.