An environmental protection activity – plogging (a combination of jogging with picking up litter) was organized by GTIIT Youth Volunteer Association (YVA) in the old downtown area of Shantou several days ago.

The plogging route started from Jinsha Park. 20 volunteers from GTIIT picked up garbage along the way while jogging through Zhongshan Road and finally arrived at the Xiao Gongyuan. The total length of the plogging route is less than 3 kilometers, which usually takes only half an hour. However, GTIIT students team spent nearly 2 hours.

GTIIT sophomore Zhang Zihan, organizer of this event, said that the initial purpose of this event was to bring "plogging" to daily lives.Before the event, some volunteers wondered whether there were really so many garbage for them to pick up. But when they started jogging, they were surprised to find different kinds of garbage, such as cigarette butts, plastic bags and paper scraps hidden in the flowerbed and lawn. "When we participated in it, we had a better understanding of sanitation workers. We knew more about the city and began to think about what we can do for this city," Freshman Wang Heji said. Cai Yixian, coming from Hunan, also shared about her feeling. "This is my first time to participate in plogging and I am happy to meet some new friends! They are very responsible and patient. We cooperated together to find as many garbage as we could."