Inside spogomi, the growing competitive sport of picking up trash
The founder of this increasingly popular international competition explains the rules and his hopes for the game's future.
About 20 years ago, an avid runner named Kenichi Mamitsuka decided, on a whim, to pick up some street trash during his morning jog around Kagoshima, Japan. Despite feeling a bit self-conscious as puzzled bystanders watched, he made the habit a core part of his exercise routine—and started to have a lot of fun with it.
“Something interesting happened,” recalls Mamitsuka in an email. “The trash I used to find unpleasant gradually turned into targets. I realized I was actually enjoying myself. That’s when it hit me: the reason it was fun was because I’d unintentionally added sports-like elements to picking up trash.”
Mamitsuka, who has a background in organizing social sports, was inspired to turn his hobby in to an organized sport called spogomi, a portmanteau of the word “sport” and “gomi,” the Japanese term for trash.
At first “almost no one understood what we were trying to do,” Mamitsuka says. “But as we continued holding SPOGOMI [sic] events, I noticed something encouraging. People who had never picked up trash before, and people who weren’t particularly interested in environmental issues, were starting to join. I think that’s because we presented litter picking as a sport.”
What separates spogomi from more casual recreational trash pickup—like “plogging” (picking up litter while jogging)—is the rulebook. Spogomi has taken the combination of exercise and litter cleaning to a competitive extreme, attracting players from all over the world.
The rules of the game
Since Mamitsuka formally established spogomi in 2008, an estimated 440,000 pounds of trash have been collected by some 190,000 spogomi participants, according to the Nippon Foundation SPOGOMI Federation, which organizes and oversees the sport.
In 2023, spogomi players convened in Tokyo for the first Spogomi World Cup, where qualifying teams representing 21 countries competed on the streets. The number spiraled upward to 34 teams in the 2025 World Cup—a testament to its growing popularity.
“It taps into a really different set of the population that doesn’t pick up litter traditionally, so you incentivize them to start picking up litter,” says Sarah Parry, a member of the World Cup 2023 champion team, named “The North Will Rise Again,” which represented the United Kingdom.
“I wasn't someone who had previously picked up litter or knew much about the environment or climate, but that has changed now through spogomi, which is amazing,” she adds.
Spogomi teams are typically given 45 minutes to collect trash in a designated area, followed by 15 minutes to rush back to base to avoid facing penalties for tardiness. Running is not allowed, and team members must remain within 32 feet of each other at all times. The rules prohibit entering private property, picking up hazardous items like broken bottles, or collecting trash that has already been thrown away. At major events like the World Cup, observing referees are assigned to teams to ensure compliance with the rules.
Once the trash is returned, each team has 20 minutes to sort their collected trash into the correct bins. Winners are decided based on trash weight and high-value items, such as cigarette butts.
“When I was designing the rules, one thing was very important to me: I wanted it to be a competition that anyone could take part in—regardless of age or gender—and where anyone could aim for the top,” says Mamitsuka. “Many sports separate people by gender or reward pure athletic ability, but I didn’t want that. Spogomi deals with environmental issues that affect all of us, so I believe everyone should be a player. That’s why one of the very first rules we created was ‘no running.’”
Though spogomi is designed to be accessible, competing at the elite level requires preparation, athleticism, and luck. Many spogomi players are already accomplished athletes, such as the Japanese sport climber Miho Nonaka, who is an Olympic medalist.
“Whilst there’s no running, it's a very fast-paced sport when you're playing at the top,” Parry says.
Spogomi also rewards strategy. Parry says that her team’s World Cup victory is owed in part to the complementary talents of its members, which also included brothers Alexander Winship and Jonathan Winship. By leveraging different strengths, such as speed and weightlifting, the team collectively lugged about 185 pounds of trash back to base to win the title.
At the 2025 World Cup, Japan’s team, named “Smile Story,” prevailed as champions with a haul of about 165 points, beating out Germany’s team “The Grandline-Cleaners” by less than a pound in the weight category.
The rules dictate that the champion team must sit out at the next World Cup, though their nation can still qualify with a different slate of players. For this reason, Parry participated in the 2025 event only as an ambassador, not a formal competitor, though she hopes to be back on the streets for the World Cup in 2027.
“It's really exciting,” she says. “I'll be training for the World Cup, and I'll be taking it seriously, because I want to go back to Japan again and ultimately, I'd love to win for a second time.”
Does spogomi really make a difference for the environment?
Though many people initially get involved in spogomi for the love of the game, ambassadors of the sport also hope that it will raise awareness about the prevalence of litter in their communities and even broader environmental challenges, such as pollution and climate change.
Marianne Krasny, a professor and director of the Civic Ecology Lab at Cornell University who studies environmental stewardship, says that close social circles play a critical role in spreading pro-environmental activities. However, she thinks that these actions—whether it’s picking up trash with friends on a walk or training to be a Spogomi World Cup champion—should ideally inspire participants to advocate for structural changes.
“Litter-picking activity is great as it cleans up local spaces, but it's not addressing the foundational problem, like: why are people littering?” she says. “Or, can we reduce one-time plastics use? Or can we put up places where you can put your cigarette butt in a convenient place?”
Krasny suggests that the environmental impact of spogomi could be amplified by encouraging participants to connect with local officials or advocate for the environment in other ways.
“They could go from a lifestyle action of picking up litter, to an advocacy action,” she says.
Similarly, Mamitsuka hopes spogomi inspires competitors to get involved in their home communities, everywhere from the streets to the halls of power.
“Governments and communities see spogomi as a way to raise public awareness about serious environmental challenges and to encourage citizens to take action” he says. “Environmental issues—especially marine litter—are global problems that affect all of humanity. Spogomi is a way for everyone, anywhere in the world, to take part and contribute, even in a small way.”
Though Spogomi has already become more popular over the past decade, Mamitsuka hopes it evolves into an even bigger movement.
“Our long-term goal is to grow spogomi into a truly global sport, something a widely recognized as soccer or tennis,” he concludes.
