Ripu Daman Bevli, 31, adopted the name ‘The Plogman of India’. Starting this month, he’s going on a country-wide drive to ‘plog’ in 50 cities across two months, driving from city to city, coordinating with running- groups locally . “I will start plogging from the hotel at about 4-4:30 (a.m.), reach the meeting point, and then continue until about 11:30 , so people can come and go as they please,” he says.
Sitting in Qahwa, a cafe in SDA market, the haunt of many after-run breakfasts, he remembers how it all started — with a newspaper report he saw in 2017. A running race had just taken place and three days later, the trash (mostly plastic bottles and promotional material) generated from it, was still littering the streets. He and a friend took some bags and cleared up the 4km stretch. He began doing this regularly, usually after a run, sometimes posting pictures on a Facebook group called My City = My Responsibility. This drew other runners into what was then a cool-down activity.
Soon they discovered that the Swedes had a name for this, and the world was embracing it: plogging, a combination of jogging and picking up trash.
Ripu with a young plogger
“When you run in the morning, there’s little traffic and few people, and all you see is the trash,” says Ripu, who was named after one of Nabha’s most famous kings. He says he’s been chased by dogs and monkeys and has had people look at him oddly when he’s going about it. “It’s not in our DNA to pick up other people’s litter, but in that one simple action of bending to pick up one piece, it’s likely that you’ll think before you throw something on the road again,” he says.
Last year, he decided to quit his full-time job in IT and focus solely on this, reaching out to communities and NGOS “to change ingrained mindsets and behaviour.” He also works with companies to do corporate workshops, helping them understand the bane of single-use plastic bottles, and encouraging them to take simple steps to keep our surroundings clean.
You don’t have to be fit or even a runner to plog — you just need to want to make a change in your life, he says. The focus is two-fold: to make India litter-free (facebook.com/RunToMakeIndiaLitterFree), while also keeping healthy yourself. “We’re combining both Swachh Bharat and Swasth Bharat,” he says. A by-product is to raise awareness about more sustainable sports events that are beginning to take place in the country.
The event kicks off from Delhi August 16 and will be back on October 2nd 2019; contact: ploggerofindia@gmail.com
