Finally. A Worthy Challenge for the World.

For the past few years, viral challenges had been ridiculous the Tide Pod Challenge or the Cinnamon Challenge; creating risky problems for societies rather than fix them.

None were as positively successful as the global Ice Bucket Challenge or the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which raise awareness of the disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which started off in the United States in 2015.

Since early March of this year, there is a new challenge. Worthy of challenge any social groups or people to take up for the environment.

Whom Started it?

There are various sources when #TrashTag first started but it did not really go across the borders until this post by Byron Román challenge “bored teens” to make a difference with a before-and-after photo fad of him in an area filled with litter and cleaned up after.

Original Facebook Post Screenshot from Byron Román

Since then, the original Facebook post was shared over 310,000 times with different groups of people of family and friends, making positive actions happen with their own photo fad of their #TrashTag Challenges across the globe. The tag has also found its way onto Instagram #TrashTag Challenge trending with near 25,000 tags to date.

Why Viral?

For many whom took up the #TrashTag Challenge, the online social movement usually starts social motive to get together as well as to solve real world problems, especially when one’s particular place of litter can be an eyesore, putting people into action with a common goal.

The sharing of the before-and-after photo of their clean-up progress of their environment creates social proof as well as a reward of satisfaction to that collective achievement that it is possible and there is hope.

Ultimately, the challenge has gone viral simply because it is real and authentic (doubt anyone is that free to photoshop trash away!)

Where is the Singapore #TrashTag?

It seems that Singapore does not need #TrashTag because Singapore is well-known to be a clean and green city.

However, we do have a problem with coastal trash issue. Since Singapore is an island and an international port-city, while the world’s oceans are suffering from marine litter issue, it is inevitable that we too suffer from coastal litter due to floating marine debris or trash brought in by the seas.

Yet, Singapore is no stranger to clean-ups: we have a robust clean-up culture all year round, including those done by companies with their own corporate social responsibility programs for the environment.

In fact, there is already a map of places in Singapore suitable for yout #TrashTag Challenge which was originally built for the International Coastal Cleanup done annually.

Map of Places for Coastal Cleanups in Singapore by NUS

There also guidelines available from Singapore’s Public Hygiene Council on what to do, if you want to start a #TrashTag challenge today!