Juan Naula moved to L.A. from Virginia late last year in hopes of finding funding for his ride-sharing start-up, but things didn’t go according to plan. He was running out of money — and hope — when he decided to go for a walk in Elysian Park.
“When I got there I saw so much trash. It kind of made me sad, because it’s a beautiful place,” Naula said.
So he started picking it up. He was talking to his wife in his home country, Ecuador, and told her what he was doing. She encouraged him and told him to post about it on social media.
The account he started is called “Clean L.A. With Me,” and his time-lapsed videos of himself cleaning up the city — along roads, in parks, on sidewalks — have gotten him tens of thousands of followers. He also collects trash in places like Santa Monica Pier and Venice Beach.
