The latest social media craze, the new ‘#trashtag’ challenge, requires participants to clean up litter in parks and beaches.
The challenge involves gathering a group of friends (preferrably) or starting out on your own to remove all the litter on a nature trail, beach or park – any outdoor public space, in fact.
The person to credit for kickstarting this campaign is Byron Romàn, and educator from Arizona, USA. He posted a video of a young man sitting in what looks like a forested area with plastic bags and litter strewn all around him. In a second image in the post that he’d since deleted off Facebook, the same person is standing proudly among nine full bags of the rubbish, with a pitchfork, shovel and rubber gloves to the side. The Director of Education called this the #BasuraChallenge, and (somewhat) jokingly appealled to ‘bored teens’ to take up the challenge. Translated from Spanish, ‘basura’ means trash or waste.
In the first image, a young man sits among a forest-like trail littered with rubbish. In the second, the trail is litter-free as he’s cleaned it all up, with nine rubbish bags to prove it. Image via Facebook/ Byron Romàn.
‘Here is a new #challenge for all you bored teens.’ said Romàn. ‘Take a photo of an area that needs some cleaning or maintenance, then take a photo after you have done something about it, and post it.’
The main participants are cited as teenagers, but anyone and everyone should join in this initiative. If we all did this, the world could be a much cleaner place – and a safer one for the environment, too, as animals are currently increasingly being affected and injured by the plastic waste being thrown into it.
Some folks are even doing it for their birthdays, posting victorious before-and-after birthday selfies. It’s perhaps a suitable activity for such occasions; we should all consider what sort of world we’re leaving to the next generations.
The ‘after’ images can be quite striking as well. Some people turned up with bags and bags of rubbish, and others with rows and rows of odd items such as sunglasses.
Here’s how the #trashtag challenge works:
1. Take a snap of the dirty, rubbish-strewn environment before you set to working on it;
2. Attempt a thorough clean-up of the area;
3. Take another photo of the now-clean area and post it to your favourite social media platform.
It’s that simple, and you can use the challenge hashtag of #trashtag to submit your clean, rubbish-free area to the internet’s growing gallery boasting environmental care and active citizenship.
Check out some of these #trashtags:
Featured image: Pexels
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