reasonstobecheerful.world
What We’re Reading: Introducing the Competitive Sport of… Spogomi
Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Tell us what you’ve been reading at info@reasonstobecheerful.world and we just might feature it here.
Tackling trash
When Samuel Salamone set up his litter.per.follower social media account, he pledged to pick up a piece of trash for every new follower. On the first day, the young teen had zero followers, but picked up 50 pieces of trash anyway. By day two he had 27 followers, so collected 27 pieces as promised. And by day three: 25,000 followers.
Wisely, and out of necessity, Salamone had to rapidly change tack and is now collecting 100 pieces of trash a day for 100 days, cheered on by his now 850,000 plus followers.
At RTBC HQ, we’ve been discussing the rise of trash-targeting social accounts such as Salamone’s and the pride people take in protecting local wildlife while nurturing a sense of community spirit, so it was with great joy this week that we discovered spogomi, the competitive sport of litter-picking.
Do we wish there wasn’t so much trash around to start with? Of course. But, as this Positive News article shared by Interim Editorial Director Tess Riley makes clear, given the volume of plastic waste and cigarette butts currently discarded onto our streets, spogomi is an activity where people are getting exercise and enjoying themselves while ensuring that the real winner is the environment.
Tess says:
I’ve loved following Samuel Salamone’s rise to fame, armed with a litter-picker and his signature heart-warming smile, and I’ve no doubt he’d excel at spogomi. I’m keen to give the sport a go myself! It reminds me of Contributing Editor Geetanjali Krishna’s lovely story about the “Plastic Cup” competitions cleaning up rivers in Hungary. If Spogomi World Cup organizers could localize the international competition side of things so that participants aren’t flying around the world to compete, that would be the icing on the cake.
50 species that save us
We know the benefits bees bring in terms of fertilizing our crops, and that trees have by removing climate-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, making it somewhat possible to fathom how serious a world without them would be.
But as this Washington Post interactive demonstrates, new interdisciplinary research is revealing manifold additional ways in which nature is protecting people — thus highlighting what’s at stake when species are endangered. From the Tokay Gecko to the Madagascar periwinkle, the interactive, shared by Contributing Editor Michaela Haas, allows readers to click on each of 50 illustrated cards to find out how human lives have been enriched and even saved as a result of our connections to plants and animals.
Michaela says:
This is a delightful reminder how animals protect our health: Frogs deter malaria. Bats reduce the need for harmful pesticides. Wolves guard motorists from car accidents. And vultures protect people from dog bites and rabies.
What else we’re reading
Community Kitchen Brings Food Justice to the Table — shared by Executive Editor Will Doig from Civil Eats
Five Native Tribes Are Coming Together to Protect a California Cultural Landscape — shared by Contributing Editor Michaela Haas from Los Angeles Times
Finnish-Style Baby Boxes Get a New York Twist — shared by Interim Editorial Director Tess Riley from Bloomberg
We Can Now Track Individual Monarch Butterflies. It’s a Revelation — shared by Contributing Editor Michaela Haas from The New York Times
Tools You Probably Already Own Were Used to Build This Tiny Prefab Home in Ecuador — shared by Interim Editorial Director Tess Riley from Dwell
The Climate Solution Sitting in America’s Trash — shared by Interim Editorial Director Tess Riley from Outrider
In other news…
We’re lucky enough to have readers across the world, meaning not everyone’s experienced the biting winds and occasional snow that some of the RTBC team members have encountered over the last week. But if the weather has turned colder where you are, the worst of it will undoubtedly be being felt by those who live on the streets. That’s where organizations like New York Cares and Wrap Up London come in, helping match up pre-loved coats to those who need them most.
Whether you have a coat to donate or can spend a little extra time to organize a coat drive in your neighborhood, it’s worth seeing what’s happening in your community to help keep people warm this winter. Here’s a photo from day one of a coat drive our Interim Editorial Director Tess organized a few winters back. Over just a few days, she ended up with more than 500 coats and all it took was a few messages to neighbors and local businesses to spread the word.
Photo courtesy of Tess Riley.
The post What We’re Reading: Introducing the Competitive Sport of… Spogomi appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
New Posts (Home)
ChatBox
Popular Posts 
Game Zone
Top PodCasts
