03-08-2025
We Brits are world champions at picking up litter, but only if it's a matter of sport
A decade ago, when Marie Kondo published The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the activity that was once seen as a dull household chore underwent a startling glow-up. From the wildly successful social media 'cleanfluencer', Mrs Hinch, to the former I'm A Celebrity star, Stacey Solomon, now the doyenne of BBC1's Sort Your Life Out, tidying has somehow acquired the moral authority of spiritual practice, along with apparently irresistible entertainment value. The combination has attracted a cult following – but it is a cult whose beliefs currently seem to stop at the front door.
Step into the street and the fashionable obsession with order and cleanliness vanishes. Last week a correspondent to the Telegraph noted the distressing contrast between the immaculate, tree-lined, flower-bedecked streets of Canada, where she had recently been on holiday, and the weed- and litter-strewn streets of Britain.
As long ago as 1954, the Women's Institute passed a resolution to start a national anti-litter campaign, and in 1960 the charity Keep Britain Tidy was founded. Ever since, an army of gallant volunteers armed with litter-grabbing prongs has waged battle against the inexorable advance of rubbish dropped by people who can't be bothered to find a bin, or take it home (and are apparently untroubled by the fact that littering is a criminal offence).
Something more is needed to spur the Brits into tidying our parks and streets as assiduously as we do our homes. And once again, the answer may come from Japan. SpoGomi (the word is a fusion of 'sport' with 'gomi', the Japanese word for rubbish) is a competitive litter-picking sport, in which teams pick up as much rubbish as possible in two 45-minute sessions, with points awarded for speed and the weight of the haul. It was invented in 2008 and the first international World Cup was held in Tokyo in 2023, when a British team triumphed against competitors from 21 countries, including Japan, the US, Australia and France.
Dr Sarah Parry from Glasgow, who was part of the winning team, explained the charm of SpoGomi. It turns the noxious chore of collecting litter into a fiercely competitive international sport, and it gets you fit while helping the environment. Most importantly, it makes people notice litter, rather than accepting it as an inevitable part of their surroundings – as unremarkable as the pigeons and foxes that live on the scraps we mindlessly drop.
The American humorist David Sedaris, who lives in West Sussex, has written and broadcast extensively about his litter-picking in the countryside around his home: 'You can tell where my territory ends and the rest of England begins. It's like going from the rose arbour in Sissinghurst to Fukushima after the tsunami.'
Qualifying heats for the 2025 Spogomi World Cup were held recently, and a British team will travel to Tokyo in October. Should they emulate the Lionesses and succeed in defending their title, there will be no open-top bus parade. But at the very least, the environment secretary should lay on a modest reception. For if SpoGomi could do for litter-picking what Marie Kondo did for tidying, our litter-strewn streets and parks and beauty spots might begin to look a bit more like the rose arbour at Sissinghurst, and less like the site of a disaster.
