The competition was intense. At one point, the members of another team came over to us and tried to pick rubbish out of our bag

SpoGomi is a sport involving litter-picking by teams of three. You’re given an area of roughly 1.5 sq km (0.6 sq miles), and have to collect as much litter as possible within an hour or so, with some items awarded more points than others. Once you’ve collected your litter, you go to the sorting area and have another 20 minutes to sort it into recycling categories. The litter is then weighed. The team with the most points wins.

SpoGomi was invented in Japan in 2008. The name is a combination of “sport” and the Japanese word for rubbish, “gomi”. The first SpoGomi world cup didn’t take place until last year. My brother Stephen stumbled across SpoGomi in São Paulo, where he lives. I heard about the sport from him in May last year. The UK SpoGomi competition was scheduled for August, with the world cup in Tokyo in November. I had just a few months to form my team. Initially we were drawn to taking part because of the prize of a trip to Japan.