Meet the Ambassadors

Sharona Shnayder

Sharona Shnayder is a 22 year old Nigerian-Israeli environmental activist mobilizing for climate justice in the Middle-East. She is also the Founder of the global grassroots movement Tuesdays for Trash inspiring individuals around the world to dedicate Tuesdays–or every day– for trash picking, conversing about the waste management issue, demanding better practices from big businesses and becoming responsible citizens working towards a healthier home for all. Additionally, she serves as the Chairwoman of the social justice non-profit OurstreetsPDX and is a part of the Global Choices’ Arctic Angel community. Her main passion is to reduce global waste and create a more sustainable, clean and equitable home for everyone on this planet.

Alexandra Medina Perez

Alexandra Medina Pérez is a graduate in Marine Sciences and since 2021 she has been actively organizing clean-ups in coastal and ravine areas of Gran Canaria. She dedicates her free time to raise awareness about pollution and tries to involve all citizens of the island in the fight. For this purpose, she uses her academic background to share the scientific evidence of climate change with everyone she knows and each volunteer that joins at her events.

Henry Ferland

Henry Is a 20 year old content creator, climate optimist, and eco musician. Located in Boston, Henry goes out everyday and cleans up trash around the City. Through his fun and wholesome content on TIkTok he has created a community of people from all around the world who are inspired to clean up trash too and to make positive impacts to help our environment. Outside of social media Henry is also a full time student at Berklee College of Music and an international guitar thumbpicking champion.

Elizabeth Sherr

Elizabeth (Liz), known as her handle @lizlivingblue, is an ocean and sustainability scientist and activist that uses social media storytelling to inspire local action in marine protection, primarily through beach cleanups. Even though Liz has studied the ocean and done cleanups since she was young, her activism took off on World Oceans Day 2021 when she created a #TrashChallenge campaign with the European Parliament that encouraged global viewers to pick up trash in their communities. Liz has since created other “Trash Challenges” that provide both a real and positive take on our planet’s plastic pollution following the theme “every piece counts.” Liz also shares content on marine science education because she believes, “the more we learn about our oceans, the more we can care about them.”

Maija Elizabeth

My name is Maija Elizabeth and I am a 19 year old Sustainability Content Creator based in Maryland! I enjoy taking care of our oceans by cleaning up trash in my community and helping others live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Let’s make the world a better place!

Carissa Cabrera

Carissa Cabrera is a marine conservationist, sustainability educator, and climate advocate. For the past 10 years, Carissa has focused on ocean recovery efforts related to endangered species, ecosystem restoration, conservation financing, community outreach, and environmental literacy. She co-founded The Conservationist Collective, an environmental storytelling platform dedicated to informing and inspiring others to find their unique place in the environmental movement. Carissa’s work, company, and media projects are united by the shared goal to increase accessibility to climate education and accelerate conservation action on a global scale.

Alex Filarado

Alex Filardo is a fisheries biologist, media producer, and field researcher based in Hawai’i. He earned a Masters Degree in Marine Science and now specializes in conservation storytelling and field work in remote regions of the globe, including the Pribilof Islands in Alaska and Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument of Hawai’i. He co-founded The Conservationist Collective in 2020 to harness the power of media to share science with the public. Alex believes in a community-driven and collaborative approach to conservation that seeks to educate and empower local communities.
@alexfilardo
@theconservationistcollective

Paul Waye

Hi, my name is Paul Waye.

I am a 55 year old ex-Brit living in the Netherlands (now officially Dutch), and I am perhaps.. maybe..hopefully.. the “hardest working plogger in the World”!

A grand claim for sure! haha. But let’s see if I can back it up. Oh gosh, I have a lot to live up to now! 

WHEN I STARTED
My first official plog was in 2011. I was on my run commute to work when I noticed all this trash in the hedges. So I bent down, picked some up and made a tweet about it. 
Although it wasn’t the first time I did something like that, it was the first time I did it and made a social media comment on it, so I take that as my first time
(yep, it was 5 years before the Swedes came up with the word plogging, so I just said ‘look what I picked up while running’).

Sheyla Ravelo Perez

Sheyla Ravelo Perez is Miss Cuba International and was the reigning Miss Earth Cuba in 2022. She has a passion for sustainability and protecting our oceans. Growing up in Cuba, she has a deep-rooted connection with the ocean and has always strived to live in a way that protects it. Sheyla serves as an example to others by doing cleanups regularly and using her voice to spread awareness about caring for our environment. On top of this, her platform entering Miss Earth is to combat overconsumption in fashion and showcases this through her reuse and reimagination of old dresses into new creations.

Christine Figgener

Marine biologist, Dr. Christine Figgener, who works for the Footprint Foundation in the US, lends her voice and comes to support World Cleanup Day as an ambassador from Germany: "We are in a plastic pandemic. For years I have witnessed the destructive effects of plastic in our oceans to our animals and it is becoming increasingly clear that also our health is directly jeopardised. To turn things around, we need to take massive countermeasures, raise awareness and mobilize as many people around the world as possible. World Cleanup Day is exactly the kind of global platform that can do just that. That's why I'm an ambassador.”

Thank you so much for the inspiration, Christine and Let's Do It Germany!

Marisa Ford

Marisa Butler of Maine was named Miss Earth USA 2021. She represented the USA at the Miss Earth international competition and was crowned Miss Earth - Air.

Marisa graduated Cum Laude from Stonehill College in Easton Massachusetts in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics and a minor in Business Administration. Marisa studied abroad at King’s College London, where she specialized in Environmental and Political Economics. Marisa lives in San Diego, California where she works as a Financial Advisor and leads a non-profit called We Clean Trails. Her organization meets every Saturday morning to remove litter from walking, hiking and bike trails, as well as beaches and public parks. We Clean Trails has removed over 23,000 pounds of trash from San Diego as of late 2023.

Ben Taylor

Ben Taylor holds degrees in Anthropology, Sociology, and Environmental Policy from St. Olaf College. He serves as the Director of Digital Strategy for CleanUps and is active in efforts to support Minnesota State Parks.

#CleanUpAmbassador

Steven Reinhold

Steven Reinhold founded Trashtag in 2015 when he pledged to pick up 100 pieces of litter on an upcoming road trip and then documented his efforts. From this idea, a movement was born. Over the past six years, the Trashtag movement has grown into a global movement, with cleanup actions often becoming viral social media events

#trashtag #CleanUpAmbassador

Byron Roman

Byron Roman created one of Trashtag’s most viral images when he reposted the before and after image of a cleanup in Algeria along with the simple challenge for anyone bored to “take a photo of an area that needs some cleaning or maintenance, then take a photo after you have done something about it, and post it.”

#trashtag #CleanUpAmbassador

Chetna Batra

Chetna Batra specializes in helping nonprofits take advantage Google Ad Words & SEO capabilities to increase the success of their missions. She is an avid volunteer for keeping the outdoors clean. Professionally, she is a Senior Analyst who works towards preventing fraud with American Express.