There’s a Garbage Collecting World Cup in Japan - and Egypt Qualified!

The inaugural edition of the SpoGomi Garbage World Cup in Japan is about to introduce competitive garbage collecting to the world in November 2023, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. A team from Egypt has joined 20 countries to see who will be crowned kings and queens of picking up trash!

‘SpoGomi’, a combination of ‘sport’ and ‘gomi’ (Japanese for rubbish), was first invented in 2008.  Under World Cup rules, each team has three players and is given 60 minutes to gather rubbish in a designated area - in this case, the streets of Tokyo. However, the real challenge lies in sorting it correctly into bags for burnable waste, recyclable plastic bottles, metal cans and other categories. Players are also held back by a number of restrictions: they’re not allowed to run, and they’re not allowed to take items from private properties, roads or railway tracks.

When the time is up, the trash is weighed to determine which team is the victor. In case of a tied result, extra points would be determined by different types of waste.