5 Ways to Start Pliking on Your Next Bike Ride

There is just something so darn rewarding about a healthy “havin’ fun” with “doin’ good” balance when recreating. I think that’s what immediately caught my attention when I heard of the new fitness craze, “plogging”. This fitness wave from Sweden is a combo of “plocka upp” – meaning pick up in Swedish – and jogging. Take a look:

Yes! My people! While I’m not a jogger myself, I love pliking. That is, “plocka upp” + biking. Be it with my cargo bike, jersey pockets or panniers, there are plenty of ways to do a little good on your bike rides. Since 2018 was the year of plogging, let’s make it official: 2019 is the year of pliking!

The great thing about pliking is it can be so simple and done anywhere, from an urban commute to a remote trail ride. Check out these 5 ways to plike on your next ride.

Panniers

When I head out to hit the single track in my local national forest, I like to pop one or two panniers on my mountain bike so I can fill them with any trash I see. On a recent ride, I found some plastic bottle caps and glass bottles. You can get creative too! I ran out of room in my pannier so I used a rubber Nite Ize Gear Tie to hang it on the outside of my pannier. If you’re concerned about your panniers getting dirty, line them with trash bags that you can tie up and toss once full or reuse.

Pockets

Every little bit of litter picked up counts so don’t pass up the cargo carrying capacity in your own clothes! Pockets are a great place to store little bits of waste, like deflated balloons, bottle caps or plastic wrappers.

Bottle cages

Have an empty bottle cage? Fill it with trash you can dump at the nearest trash can! Bonus if you find a cup that you can then fill with more.

Backpack

Wearing a backpack while out riding is a great way to leave your commute or trail better than ya found it. If you’re worried about getting your bag dirty, line it with a plastic bag that you can toss once full or reuse.

Cargo bike

This set up is the one I use when I wanna do some heavy hitting trash clean up. You can haul a TON of garbage with a cargo bike! If I see something too big to haul on my regular ride, I tend to head back out later with my EdgeRunner or FreeRadical Leap. For example, hauling our old lawn chairs and a suitcase with my electric EdgeRunner or 4 trash bags of glass bottles and a grill top with my Leap. Check out my gear tips for building up the epic cargo bike trash hauler here: Ridin’ ecofriendly with a trash haulin’ cargo bike.

What’s your preferred way to plike? Let us know what method we are missing and we’ll add it to the list! And feel free to share your pliking hauls in the comments.