Junior SeaKeepers 24-25 Webinar 2: Shelby Mendez - Marine Debris Circularity

Overview

On Wednesday, October 16th, 2024, The International SeaKeepers Society hosted the second Junior SeaKeepers Program webinar for 2024-25 cohort students. For this virtual industry talk, we were thrilled to have Shelby Mendez, a Master's Student from the University of Georgia and SeaKeepers partner scientist specializing in marine debris circularity.

Shelby Mendez was born and raised in metro Atlanta, Georgia. She recently graduated with her Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Georgia and was a part of Dr. Jambeck's Circularity Informatics Lab for 3 years. During this time, she collected and analyzed plastic pollution data for various cities across the US and the world. Currently, she is working on her Master's Degree in Environmental Engineering continuing her research with Dr. Jambeck. Her Master’s thesis is focused on conducting a Circularity Assessment Protocol (CAP) in 3 cities to better understand obstacles to rural recycling in communities in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. Outside of school, Shelby has had two summer internships with ExxonMobil in Houston working on environmental remediation projects in a refinery. Overall, her love and appreciation for the outdoors and conserving them through environmental stewardship play a big part in the opportunities she pursues.

As a part of our webinar, Shelby outlined her history in the field, including her educational experience and what her position at the University of Georgia entails. Kathryn also went into detail about the partnered citizen science project with Marine Debris Tracker, and how collecting data about plastics and other types of debris in this way can be incredibly beneficial to scientists and policymakers working on plastics legislation. We concluded the webinar with a Q+A with students, where many questions were directed at alternatives for plastics in addition to solutions to our existing plastic debris problems.