Running is prohibited in this Japanese discipline. Spogomi, a sport where cigarette butts are worth their weight in gold.
You may have never heard of this sport, but spigoma was born in Japan about two decades ago, from a relatively simple idea by Kenichi Mamitsuka, from Kagoshima.
The sport that today combines physical exercise with sustainability began with Mamitsuka’s morning runs, who thought it was a good idea to collect the trash he found along the way.
Currently, there are thousands who practice — and compete — in World Spogomi Championships.
“The trash that I used to find unpleasant was slowly turning into targets. I realized that I was having fun. It was then that I understood: the reason I was having fun was because I had inadvertently added sporting elements to the trash collection,” the creator told , in January.
With experience in organizing team sports, the Japanese decided to formalize the idea in 2008 and named it, spogomi, from a portmanteau of the English word sport (sport) with gomiwhich means trash in Japanese.
At the beginning, he reveals, almost no one really understood the objective of the initiative. Then he began to notice that “people who had never collected trash before and people who weren’t particularly interested in environmental issues started wanting to participate.” He calculates that it was like this because the sport factor was at stake.
It’s not plogging: how to “play” spogomi
What distinguishes spogomi from more informal practices, such as — picking up trash while jogging — is precisely its set of rules. The modality took the combination of physical exercise and civic intervention to a competitive global.
According to the Japanese Federation of the SPOGOMI Foundation, around 190,000 participants have already collected, in total, an estimated 200 kilos of trash since the formal creation of the sport. In 2023, Tokyo hosted the first Spogomi World Cupwith teams from 21 countries. In 2025, according to , the number rose to 34 teams and 99 practitioners — the winner was Japan, despite having finished with fewer kilos of trash collected than third place, Morocco, which collected almost 80 kilos (we’ll explain in a moment).
Teams have, as a rule, 45 minutes to collect trash in a designated area, followed by 15 minutes to return to base. If they arrive late, they suffer penalties.
Running is prohibiteddictates another rule. Members of each team also have to stay within 10 meters of each other.
It is not permitted to enter private property, collect dangerous objects, such as broken glass, or pick up previously bagged or discarded trash. In larger competitions, referees ensure compliance with the rules.
In the end, the waste has to be separated correctly in just 20 minutes. The score results not only from the total weight collected, but also from the value attributed to certain waste — such as cigarette butts, which count more.
One of the priorities in creating the sport was that everyone could compete on an equal footing, regardless of age or gender. But, explains the creator, competing at the highest level requires preparation, endurance and tactics. Many elite practitioners already have athletic experience. The collective strategy, a combination of speed, strength and organization, also weighs heavily.
