29 year old Vivek (instagram: @theplogman) from Pune, India, now based in North London, is an environmental activism who leads the world’s largest community of ‘ploggers’.
The concept started in Sweden in 2016, the word Plogging is made up of the Swedish jogga (jogging) and plocka up (a pick-up). Plogging is form of litter picking where people are encouraged to combine fitness with keeping their streets clean. In 2019 Vivek set up the Pune Ploggers community in his home city. Over 10,000 members they collected over 1,000 tonnes of rubbish. In 2021, Vivek bought his environmental activism to the UK where he came came to study an MSc in environmental policy and management at University of Bristol.
Gaurav recently launched his Plog Yatra to litter pick cross 50 UK cities including Belfast, Glasgow and Edinburgh. In 2022 Gaurav was awarded the PM’s award by Boris Johnson for his work and and spoke at the 17th UN Climate Change Conference of Youth (Coy17) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the youth version of Cop27. Reflecting on climate change and other environmental issues, Gaurav emphasises on the importance of ordinary citizens taking action. His more pragmatic approach to environmental activism contrasts to more disruptive campaigns such as Just Stop Oil, saying “[Disruptive protests] also brings a sense of refusing responsibility towards the environment and just blaming everything on the government, which I don’t think is the only approach”.