MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australian Ian Kiernan, an environmental campaigner who turned a clean-up of Sydney Harbour into a global fight against litter, has died from cancer at 78, Clean Up Australia said on Wednesday.
The round-the-world yachtsman started his anti-litter campaign in Australia nearly 30 years ago, and then went global in 1993 with Clean Up the World, which now involves more than 30 million people.
"Ian's approach was always to empower others. When he founded a movement first to clean up Australia and then clean up the world," Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in parliament on Wednesday.
Kiernan was also known for leaping to shield Britain's Prince Charles from a protester who fired two blanks shots from a starter's pistol at a 1994 ceremony in Sydney where the environmentalist was named Australian of the Year.
"I didn't think about it. I just knew we had to get this bloke and we got him," Kiernan told reporters after he helped to tackle the young man who was angry about Australia holding Cambodians in detention camps.
(Reporting by Sonali Paul; editing by Darren Schuettler)
