It’s Saturday morning at Manly Beach and you could cut the tension with a knife.
Nearly 100 people are crouched over piles of litter, frantically sorting them into coloured tote bags. A man wearing an umpire bib looms over a group beside us and blows his whistle.
“Two minutes!” he calls. “Two minutes!” The team is trying to figure out if a discarded tennis racket counts as “non-burnable waste” or “bulky waste”. If it’s bulky, the team will lose 100 points – and the stakes are high.
This is Australia’s World Cup qualifier for spogomi, a game invented in Japan in 2008 by Kenichi Mamitsuka under the slogan “Trash pickup is a sport!” to make rubbish collection more engaging and to raise awareness about waste.
The name is simple – combining the English word “sport” with “gomi”, the Japanese word for rubbish.
The victor will win a trip to Tokyo to compete against about 20 countries including the US, the UK and China for the prestigious Spogomi World Cup 2025.
Despite only discovering the sport existed a week ago and learning the basics via a pamphlet distributed at the beginning of the event, I am among Australia’s participants.
Ecowarriers Ben Cornford and Caitlin Cassidy scour the back streets of Manly in their quest to fill a winning bag of rubbish. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian
This is the first and only qualifier Down Under, with 30 teams of three participating. Anyone who happened to be in Sydney, free on Saturday morning and registered before it sold out had a shot at the national title.
The rules are as follows: teams have one hour to pick up rubbish within a designated area. The types of rubbish collected, and their weight, earn certain points. Some items – including prams, rice cookers, fire extinguishers and tyres – are banned and attract a penalty.
Participants are allowed to walk quickly but not run, and must stay within 10 metres of their team members at all times. Rule breaches lead to a yellow or red card – and then elimination.
At the end of the game, teams have 20 minutes to sort their items into their correct waste disposal bags before points are counted.
This is only the second year spogomi qualifiers have been held in Australia, but in Japan, where almost 50 regions take part in the qualifiers, the sport is hugely popular. The first World Cup in 2023 was broadcast on several television stations and attended by members of Japan’s ministry.
Competitors sort the rubbish they have collected in the final leg of the Spogomi World Cup 2025 rubbish picking up contest, at Manly. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian
Australia’s spogomi founder, Jason Partington, who took Australia’s winners to Tokyo when the inaugural world cup was held, says the sport is “only going to get bigger” here.
“It was crazy,” he says of the 2023 event. “It was like being in the Olympics … it was incredible.”
To Partington, what’s dressed up as a fun event is really about raising environmental awareness. “We know 80% of litter that ends up in the ocean comes from the land, so the more we can get people aware that instead of walking past rubbish, you should pick it up, the better,” he says.
“There’ll be hundreds of kilograms of stuff that we’ve collected today.”
Initially, there is a relaxed atmosphere in the air. Families leisurely inspect the tongs and gloves we have been provided with and finish their coffees.
A group of high school friends, Florian, Satyeer and Joe, don’t feel the need to discuss tactics before we kick off. They’ve named their team the Trash Talkers, and are participating on the basis that it seemed like a “kooky and fun thing” to do on a Saturday morning.
In Japan, many spogomi competitors dress as popular anime and manga characters. Photograph: Takashi Aoyama/Getty Images
“This is a weird one, it’s a mix of competitiveness but I also don’t think any of us are really going to be bothered if we don’t win,” Florian says. “I was thinking about this yesterday – should I be amped and planning? But then I thought I’d just wing it. Hopefully, there’s no injuries.”
Next to them are the Spaghettios, another group of mates who discovered the event via a flyer in a public toilet and were enticed by the prize to Tokyo. “It doesn’t really matter what the outcome is, it’s not going to be a bad time,” one of them reflects.
As someone whose experience of competitive sport amounts to participation medals at high school athletics days, I expect to be an ocean of calm. But then we are given our maps, which show the boundaries of the pickup area, and have just five minutes to discuss tactics.
I kick into gear, planning to target bus stops and the sidestreets of pubs. A countdown ensues, and the teams – all of us wearing bibs emblazoned with “Spogomi World Cup” – briskly walk into Manly, armed with rubbish bags and scouring the landscape like proud ecowarriors.
I descend on a gazebo and immediately find a large pile of cigarette butts. My heart quickens and I call to my partner, who is inspecting a nearby tree. We soon discover cigarette butts everywhere – in gutters, in parks, in alleyways. How did I never notice this before?
I am appalled and exalted, doing nothing but walking and bending yet somehow sweating. The minutes quickly tick by and we have found no plastic bottles or cans. Tucked into the bushes by a bus stop I finally chance upon a half-drunk can of Jack Daniel’s and let out a victorious cry.
My partner locates a brick but we think it would be counted as “bulky waste”. Disappointed, he leaves it on the roadside. With 10 minutes to go, we comb the beach, scurrying over rocks with a mad look in our eyes.
The wind is up and plastic wrappers swirl by amid sand and dirt. A curious man in a cowboy hat peers down and starts photographing us. “Great work you guys, good job!” he says. “What are you doing?” a tourist asks my partner, looking at us as if we have lost our minds.
Finally, we return to sort our trash. I am in awe of the amount of rubbish people have collected – empty milk cartons, vodka bottles, piles upon piles of cigarette butts.
Our neatly sorted piles are taken to the judges for point scoring, and soon the winners are announced. It quickly becomes clear that our score of 435.9 points, the bulk (300) coming from our cigarette butt scavenging, is not a leading tally.
Third prize goes to Rot and Roll with 1,536.8 points, followed by Ride and Seek on 1,563.9. When the winners are declared – Crystal Clean with 2,119.3 points – the crowd bursts into cheers. The mother and daughter team nonchalantly ascends the stage to receive a novelty cheque.
We remove our bibs and wander home, buoyed by the knowledge there are fewer bits of rubbish on the street. Will I return in 2026? I don’t know, but for the rest of the day, I find myself scanning the sidewalk, instinctively seeking discarded bottles and bits of plastic, still high on the rush of a good deed.
AloJapan.com