Earlier this year, I hosted a plogging event.

No, not clogging or blogging, but plogging—picking up trash while jogging. It is something I do unplanned quite often. Halloween candy wrappers, plastic cups with iced Frappuccino remnants still inside, and newspapers. A lot of weekly newspapers, all wrapped in plastic.

On my runs, my eyes are often drawn to the bright red packaging around the newspapers that are everywhere. I have daydreamed about setting up a plogging event here but wondered, would anyone join me? Did it even matter? If my mission is to live a life following my heart while doing what I can to leave the world a better place than I found it, surely it didn’t matter if no one else showed up.

I thought about how, logistically, I could carry all the newspapers away. Within a few minutes, my arms would be too full. Could I bring a running pack? Even that would be packed with newspapers in less than five minutes. Could I take a stroller, become that woman who runs pushing a stroller not occupied by a child but filled with trash? Was I prepared to take on the task of helping clean up my community? Sure. Was I prepared to fill my kids’ stroller with leaking trash (I had just experienced how easily that can happen when I was in New York a few weeks earlier)? No, not really.

I recalled a keynote speech I attended that featured the founders of 5 Gyres, a non-profit group empowering action against the global health crisis caused by plastic pollution. Co-founders Anna Cummins and Marcus Eriksen asked us, “whose trash is it anyway?” It was a good point: to whom did trash belong? We have been told to think that the correct disposal of trash is on us after we consume something that causes it. We believe individual accountability is the way to deal with waste, but that’s not the full picture. What about once it leaves our hands?

If a teenager throws a plastic cup from a coffee shop on the ground, is it the parent’s fault for not teaching correct waste disposal etiquette? If a candy wrapper blows out of our pocket, are we a horrible person for not noticing? If we are given a plastic water bottle at a conference and it doesn’t get recycled, is that on us?

Companies spend millions of dollars on “greenwashing”—marketing aimed at convincing the public that their products have minimal environmental impact—and stimulating conversations around individual carbon footprints.

What if we disposed of that water bottle correctly, but on a windy day, the lid of the recycling bin blew open and the bottle ended up in the yard of an elderly woman. Now who does it belong to? Our city, for trash pickup? The elderly woman? Or could it possibly be that the corporation who made it and sponsored the event, requesting that every attendee be given one of their bottles. Could they have invested more in plastic alternatives that are not as harmful to our planet? Certainly.

According to a recent audit by Break Free From Plastic, the Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo and Nestlé are the world’s top plastic polluters, and have been for five years running. The audit collected and analysed 429,994 pieces of plastic pollution, which involved 14,760 volunteers working in 44 countries. A total of 397 brand audits were conducted across six continents in 2022. It found some 31,000 Coca-Cola branded products, representing a 63 per cent increase from 2021.

Companies spend millions of dollars on “greenwashing”—marketing aimed at convincing the public that their products have minimal environmental impact—and stimulating conversations around individual carbon footprints. On a recent flight, I was upgraded to first class. I was offered a full breakfast served in a ceramic bowl on a tablecloth, with metal utensils and a cloth napkin. There was no disposable waste in sight. I thought about how everyone else in the main cabin would be given plastic cups and individually wrapped snacks. And yet, the majority (typically including me!) are the ones told to reduce their carbon footprint, even if their ticket creates a fraction of the emissions of a first-class seat, while the wealthy are able to make better choices because they are given the opportunity to do so. Once again, shouldn’t the responsibility to offer better options fall further up the chain? It was easier to act in ways that were less harmful to the environment when I was offered reusable items.

What if the plastic bottle did make it into the trash pickup, only to fall out as it was dumped into the main receptacle? Or if somehow the bottle made it through the recycling facility where it was sorted and was shipped off to a country on the other side of the world for others to sort through. Is it then the responsibility of those in the destination country to clean contaminated recycling?

Runners in Times Square, New York City, with bags of trash collected during an event. Tina Muir, CEO of Running for Real, is standing fourth from left. 4 November 2022. Courtesy Tina Muir

I thought back to the unread, discarded newspapers. Who was ultimately responsibility for them?

Does it fall to residents to pick up papers that touch their property? Is it fair that we must make an extra trip to the grocery store to recycle the plastic wrapping that cannot go in the main recycling bin when we didn’t subscribe to receive those papers in the first place? Is the person who delivered the papers responsible because they did not throw the paper accurately to the front door? Are they paid enough to care? Should they be the ones to collect newspapers that don’t get picked up?

Or is it the newspaper companies? They are delivering without subscription, so should they retrieve any papers still on the ground after a week? Or is the onus on the company that makes the plastic bags? If the papers came in a backyard-compostable wrapper, even if they didn’t get picked up they would not be as harmful for our planet.

All the while I see hundreds of these uncollected newspapers. I see layers of microplastics working their way into the soils where my kids will play. Many houses have not one but five, six, seven or even eight weeks-worth of papers collecting. There are more in the street, working their way towards the nearest drain. Should someone be trying to stop it all from entering the drain? Is that my task? I noticed it. When on a run, I throw them into the closest yard, but again, that is putting it back on the individuals who didn’t ask for the paper at all.

Right now, we live in a world where we accept things the way they are. We believe we have a responsibility as “good people” to pick up trash and reduce our individual impact on the earth. I can pick up trash. I can organize plogging events and inspire others to do the same, but until we talk about it enough to make change happen at the top, from the level of those who make the decisions to produce it, our footprint will continue to grow.

“We pass responsibility on to the next person as we create more waste, take more microplastics into our bodies and face ever greater pressure to reduce our waste footprint.”

The people creating most of this trash, the packaging we did not ask for, are many of the same 100 corporations responsible for 71 per cent of global emissions. When we purchase a product, we are paying for the item, not the packaging, so why is it on us to reduce packaging waste? We pass responsibility on to the next person as we create more waste, take more microplastics into our bodies and face ever greater pressure to reduce our waste footprint. The plastic we create today will still be in a landfill when our grandchildren’s grandchildren are born.

Living through acceptance takes eyes off those who are responsible, or who should at least be under pressure to find a better way. Instead, they shift the attention back to us. What can we do?

We need to rethink the way we see waste. Instead of using our mental and physical energy picking up the slack for others, we need to use those moments to project our voices, asking those in positions of money and power what they are doing to fix the problem. Not through finding loopholes to look like they are doing something like going “carbon neutral”, but instead doing the work to lessen the pressure on individuals.

We must ask our leaders to show courage by accepting responsibility for their part in climate change, or at least be willing to work together to figure out how to improve the situation. Humanity is at stake. As the Cree Indian prophecy says, “Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.” Truer words have never been spoken.

So, whether you’re reading your local newspaper or taking a few moments to look at your trash next time you are getting ready to throw it out, ask yourself the question: whose trash is it anyway?

 It got me thinking. Maybe it will do the same for you.