Sharona Shnayder is a grassroots leader with a passion for intersectional climate justice. She seeks to raise awareness of the global garbage crisis and inspire individuals around the world to take collective action towards a cleaner and healthier future. She created Tuesdays for Trash, which has had worldwide impact.
Gabriella Cooper, Dayenu Jews of Color Caucus Organizer, had a wind-ranging conversation with Sharona about identity, community, activism, and more.
Gabriella: I’m so impressed by your work and your direction. Just to start, why the climate movement?
Sharona: I grew up in Nigeria, where all the challenges with the environment were faced very directly, and then came to the US and had such culture shock because of the disconnect to nature and the environment (specifically when it came to waste, there was a lot of just tossing things without any regard).
People were unconcerned with the amount of garbage and pollution and degradation that was happening to the planet. And it was really difficult for me to understand that mentality.
"When it came to 'Why climate?' I think it just became the most pressing and visible problem in my reality. Which is interesting because being a woman of color, specifically Black in America, is also a factor, and then adding being Jewish on top of that was another obstacle. But for some reason, my focus was always on the climate because I feel like it's such a pervasive issue, and it entangles every aspect of life, including all of those challenges and obstacles."
Gabriella: I grew up in America, but I have always been very struck by, especially in white spaces, the amount of waste, and, like you say, the lack of connection to the earth around us. How does your intersectionality inform your approach to your activism?
Sharona: I think it gives me a lot of perspective when it comes to the communities and demographics that are affected the most by the climate, specifically when it comes to pollution and trash. Just knowing that communities of color usually have a lack of infrastructure when it comes to waste management
I have family that live in marginalized and frontline communities, so the issue feels a lot more serious and close to home. So it definitely influences the motivation that I have to resolve the problem and create a solution because I don’t want to pick up trash for the rest of my life. It’s not something that I enjoy doing necessarily. It’s more of like seeing a problem and wanting to solve it.
Gabriella: And I love that you are just taking that approach. I think there is something very Black feminine about that, about just taking what’s in front of you and dealing with it for the better of the community.
I imagine some people, myself included, to be honest, can feel a little overwhelmed with where to start when it comes to confronting the environment. Do you have any advice about a good starting point?
Sharona: Start small. Start as small as possible. I think a lot of people, like you said, get intimidated and they think you need to be a world leader in order to solve problems. But in reality, Tuesdays for Trash started with just me and a friend picking up trash at our university. It was just a bag of trash turned into people in over 60 countries and 100,000 pounds of trash removed.
Gabriella: Amazing!
Sharona: So I think that just having this mindset of taking action in some form, not putting pressure on yourself, but being consistent with it is my recommendation. And I think that’s why Tuesday for Trash is such a perfect gateway into activism for the everyday person because it takes very little coordination and effort. There is trash everywhere in the world, anyone can participate.
Gabriella: How would you encourage other young people, especially Jews of color, to engage in the work?
Sharona: I think being a representative is so important. I would say that I would have become an activist a lot sooner if I had more people to look up to, and seeing the capacity that I have in this space.
It wasn’t until people like Greta [Thunberg] started speaking out and people were taking them seriously that I realized this concept of not having to be a world leader in order to change things. And I wish I had someone like myself growing up who would have inspired me sooner, and given me these tools and this kind of mentality of not being afraid of being visible. I think sometimes it makes you feel like you’re a target in a sense, especially in communities where looking the way we do or coming from our background is not very welcomed.
But having the courage and making sure that you have community behind you, definitely what has been able to make to just your trash as scalable as possible is the fact that we have such incredible people who participate and volunteer with the movement, and whenever we get burnt out, we have a lot of people around to support and encourage us. So that’s been the biggest help.
Gabriella: That you have a culture of care within your community really resonates. I think just showing up really empowers other people to be able to show up. I just turned 32, and the older I get, the more I absolutely feel like the person I needed to be for my younger self.
It feels like a Russian doll kind of effect, where I’m so grateful – I feel so connected to all the past versions of myself. Representation is extremely important.
So, talking a little bit more about identity politics… I’m obviously in America. I think when I first enter space, the first thing people see is probably my ethnicity. And then my gender. And then maybe if I’m wearing my Judaica, maybe my religion. Is that experience different for you in different places that you’ve been active?
Sharona: Absolutely, yeah, I think it’s very contextual, and I struggle with it, especially when I travel. I usually will not identify as Israeli or Jewish, simply for safety reasons. But unfortunately, that is the identity that I relate to the most, and I find is the most true to myself.
So it’s really a struggle, especially with the impact of the war and all the narratives surrounding that. But I think when I enter most rooms, people see me as black, or maybe African, if they’re intuitive, that’s the main thing.
And then being a woman, like you said, but it’s always interesting to see the wheels turning, and it makes me very shy to introduce myself, because I can already anticipate what they want to hear. Especially with a question, where are you from? I hate this question. The bane of my existence! Because you could be asking, where was I born? Where have I lived? Where do I currently live? Where do I call home? You know, like, what’s my ethnicity and my nationality? Like it’s a whole can of worms.
Gabriella: How important is community? Very important, but how do we re-engage with community, especially post-COVID, post-war, post-Trump 2.0. How do we encourage people to re-engage with the community?
Sharona: I think meeting people where they are a lot of the time, especially with the new age of social media and algorithms, people are trying to come up with these really out of the box ideas of connecting.
But I think we need to bring it back to the basics and the foundation because it’s getting lost in a lot of the noise of it all. And what’s important I found is that you need to find the stage perspective or the grounds that people are currently on and build from there, because otherwise, you’re creating on something that has no solid foundation whatsoever.
I think it’s more about listening and research and having opportunities to sit and talk with people and understanding the perspectives that they have at the moment and going there first rather than trying to attract people to.
Gabriella: I would say that discernment is kind of going by the wayside. People are not as interested in nuance anymore and in hearing each other. That’s definitely something I’ve noticed.
I work with teenagers, and, you know, for them, the world is black and white. But I see young people, having left teenagehood, and still things are very black and white, when really, everything is gray. Everything is all connected. Our liberation is all connected. So it’s not really us versus them. It’s how do we meet in the middle and come together.
Sharona: Exactly. It’s hard to do…
Gabriella: I will say, trying to get people of color involved in the environmental movement sometimes you hear, well, that’s a white people issue. Like, well, I already reuse, reduce, recycle. I already have a bag of bags under my kitchen sink, like, that’s not a black issue. And I’m like, okay, look at our neighborhoods. Where are the trees? Why is the water poisoned? Why is the ground full of lead?
Sharona: It’s absolutely ridiculous. Really, it is. And it’s lack of education and understanding of your own capacity as well and the need to have representation. If you’re the one facing the brunt of the issues, yet you have no say in the policy of it all, then that’s a problem.
Gabriella: Yeah. Absolutely. I’m in Chicago, and local politics are very, very effective here. And so, that is my avenue to get people of color to really get invested. I’m like, you can make real tangible change. So, I think the majority of our participants are women, and I do see women in more leadership positions in the environmental movement. Do you also see that happening and why do you think that is happening?
Sharona: Yeah, I do, and I think I see a lot more women leading in the environmental movement, because it is… innately, like, a very motherly cause. When you think about Mother Nature, Mother Earth, I think a lot of aspects of the environment connect to us more because we feel the sense of empathy and love and compassion that I think a lot of men have been taught not to outwardly express or, maybe even don’t really understand these emotions to the depth that women do. I don’t know for sure that’s just my guess, but I also think that it’s a representation of effective measures. A lot of them have been led by women, especially when it comes from the Global South.
Wangari Maathai, and a lot of those really important figures who are very highly publicized provide a lot of representation for young women to see that this is something that they can aspire to as well. So I think that the media around the environment has been very heavily focused on women. In that aspect of encouraging more women to get involved.
Gabriella: Wonderful. What do you need from this work to continue? I know that burnout is a very real thing, and also asking for support as a woman of color is not our first impulse. So how do you take care of you in this movement?
Sharona: I think the best way to support a climate activist is to become one, like take a load off. I know so many people who wear a million different hats in their communities, including myself, and for me, it’s just having people who are willing to, like, take part and do their own part in their community and encourage others.
It could be as simple as picking up a piece of trash, you have no idea the scale that an action like that can have.
Gabriella: That’s really powerful, Sharona. Thank you. In Chicago, we always say, we all we got, and that’s my mantra. We all we got, all of us or none of us. And I’m so grateful for people like you in the movement. Really grateful.
This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.
Gabriella cooper
Gabriella Cooper (she/her), JOC Caucus Organizer, is committed to being part of radical change, especially through an intergenerational and intersectional lens. She is in her second year as a cohort leader at Kol Koleinu through Moving Traditions, last year leading the combined Midwest/Western cohort. Gabriella recently completed her time as the Director of Youth Engagement at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue in Evanston, IL. She is based in Chicago. When not at her day job, Gabriella is a visual artist and fiction writer who spends a lot of time at Chicago’s art museums.