Picking up litter turned into an ‘Olympic’ sport with World Cup trash collection

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure — litter-ally. 

On Wednesday, Japan held the first garbage collection world championship called the SpoGomi World Cup, AFP reported. The name of the event is a combination of the words “sport” and “gomi,” the Japanese word for garbage. 

Teams of three from 21 countries took to the streets of Tokyo in designated areas to grab as much rubbish as they possibly could within one hour.

Britain made history by taking home the first winning title after earning 9,046.1 points for collecting 126.2 pounds of trash.

“A lot of the other teams maybe were more ecological, and less sport, and we’re probably the opposite, but we’ve taken so much away about how much we need to clean up our oceans and reduce litter,” Britain’s team captain Sarah Parry said after collecting the trophy on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

In total, all the teams picked up 1,208 pounds of garbage and were assigned points based on what kind of junk they found. They weren’t permitted to collect trash from private properties.

After each of their pickup sessions, they got 20 minutes to sort the trash into separate categories including recyclable plastic bottles, burnable waste, metal cans, cigarette butts and other waste material. 

The event’s home team was upset they didn’t sweep the floor with their competition. 

“It’s frustrating because we wanted to win this event,” Tomoe Takahashi, a member of the Japanese team told The Mainichi.

“But I hope more people around the world will be interested in environmental issues.”

Japan isn’t ready to kick the bucket yet. The second World Cup will be held in Tokyo in 2025.

Before making it into a world championship, the event’s founder Kenichi Mamitsuka would pick up litter on his morning runs and he realized that by setting goals for himself he could make it more fun.

A formal event was formed in 2008 and has grown so much in polarity that 230 contests were held in Japan this year.

“If you form national SpoGomi associations, my ambition is that it could become an Olympic demonstration event,” he told AFP.