#trashtag challenge

After the popularity of the ALS Ice Bucket challenge, and the cinnamon challenge, another challenge has swept social media, rallying younger communities to post before-and-after photographs on social media after cleaning up areas littered with trash. Called the #trashtag challenge, more than 38 thousand people have posted with the hashtag since early March.

In 2015, the challenge originally started off as a project by UCO Gear, an outdoor gear brand based in Chicago. "This is a movement to inspire people to be better stewards of the environment,” says Craig Frazee, a junior design engineer at UCO.

Attention has been brought to the challenge again when posts made by an Arizona man, Byron Román, went viral. Byron Román shared a series of photos on Facebook featuring Algerian ecologist and activist Drici Tani Younes, encouraging others to take part in the challenge. The post has since gathered more than 100,000 likes and 332,000 shares.

Social media users have agreed that #trashtag is a meaningful challenge that, like the Ice Bucket Challenge that raised $115 million for the ALS association, could potentially motivate people to change the world for the better. “I like this #trashtag challenge a lot more than kids choking on cinnamon or eating TidePods. Way to go, humanity,” wrote Justin Wadsworth on Twitter.

Many have questioned whether #trashtag can make a difference. While it does raise awareness on the extent of litter pollution, plastic is being dumped into the ocean at an alarming rate. Much garbage is recycled after being cleared from beaches as most of it is composed of plastic. However, if plastic picked up is deemed by companies to be too expensive and inconvenient to recycle, it can be illegally dumped in oceans and end up on beaches once again, rendering the efforts made to pick up garbage useless. According to Ellen MacArthur, a retired English sailor, on the World Economic Forum, “We must move upstream and tackle the flood at its source.” While people around the world may be coming together to demand change, cleaning up the beaches alone is not sufficient to combat the issue of ocean pollution. It is only when changes are made to our lifestyles, that the problem can be solved.

Bibliography:

Wong, A. (2019, March 19). People are cleaning up polluted areas & posting it on social media, thanks to newest Internet challenge. Retrieved March 22, 2019, from https://mothership.sg/2019/03/people-trash-tag-challenge/

Zheng, Z. (2019, March 12). Why volunteers still clean up S'pore's coasts even when people continue to litter. Retrieved March 22, 2019, from https://mothership.sg/2019/03/singapore-volunteers-cleanup/

Bailey, S. (2019, March 13). #trashtag: Viral challenge sends internet on garbage hunt. Retrieved March 22, 2019, from https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/12/world/trashtag-internet-challenge-intl/index.html

Bratskeir, K., & Bratskeir, K. (2019, March 20). This Viral Challenge Is Making The World A Better Place. Retrieved March 22, 2019, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trashtag-plastic-waste-garbage-cleanup_n_5c8bc999e4b0d7f6b0f2eee2

Sieff, K. (2017, November 21). The world is drowning in ever-growing mounds of garbage. Retrieved March 22, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/the-world-is-drowning-in-ever-growing-mounds-of-garbage/2017/11/21/cf22e4bd-17a4-473c-89f8-873d48f968cd_story.html?utm_term=.ca465e8be09a

MacArthur, E., & Foundation, E. M. (2018, November 2). How to stop plastic pollution at source. Retrieved March 22, 2019, from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/how-stop-plastic-pollution-source-ellen-macarthur-global-commitment/