The Hash House Harriers is a unofficial, rather disorganized global group of "drinkers with a running problem" and for the most part, we are actually quite good people. We enjoy a beer but also would like to at least pretend to try to be interested in physical fitness and that is exactly what we do at all of our events.
There is an offshoot of the HHH called "Hashers not Trashers" and while I have not yet had the opportunity to go to an event with them in any sort of official sense, I am happy that they exist.
These groups exist all over the place but this particular one is in San Diego. Rather than choose a trail that they are really interested in running such as some place that is already clean and has awesome nature, they will choose a place that has been pointed out to be filled with litter and instead do their runs there. Instead of just running and then drinking beer at the end, they make it an objective that the real race is to see who can return to the start point with the most rubbish to be disposed of properly.
Here in Thailand we kind of expect everything the be covered an filled with garbage but in a place as heavily regulated and controlled as San Diego, I personally thought they would have higher standards or penalties for anyone that is littering out there. Granted, this uninhabited portion of the area is a LOT cleaner than such a place in Thailand would be, but it is still a bit disgraceful that the people that live there care so little about the environment that they would do something like this.
In the end there were many kg of garbage that was picked up at this one smallish site and to see that sort of thing going on in California, well, that kind of just lets you know that the entire world doesn't really give a damn about nature for the most part.
I'm happy that we do. While we have never hosted an official cleanup event here in Chiang Mai, we are working on doing exactly that. Even or runs that are not official cleanup runs we will have a person or two who is normally walking the trail and instead of attempting to compete with the runners, will lag behind and make their primary objective to pick up mostly plastic garbage and bring it back to the start point to be disposed of properly.
While cleaning up litter is certainly a serious affair, that doesn't mean that we all of a sudden become lawyers and aren't Hashers anymore. We still have the same silly attitude afterwards and drink beer and make fun of one another. This much is something that will never change about the Hash, and i hope it never does.
Please don't litter and if you are walking somewhere and see a plastic bottle on the ground, how about picking it up instead of just complaining about it?
