A pair of remote-controlled robots capable of skimming beaches and lakeshores for refuse will be housed at and operated by Grand Valley’s Annis Water Resources Institute this summer.
Under the control of AWRI’s fleet captain, Eric Hecox, one of the robots, BeBot, trawled along the beach at Pere Marquette Park in Muskegon while dozens of volunteers from Meijer, Unilever, the Council of the Great Lakes Region and the Alliance for the Great Lakes searched for litter during an Alliance’s Adopt-A-Beach event.
“Our mission at the AWRI is to protect and preserve our water resources, and being a part of this project goes to the heart of our mission,” said Mark Luttenton, the AWRI’s interim director.
Jonathan Seyferth, Muskegon city manager; Lauren Moran, customer team lead at Meijer; Olivia Reda, volunteer engagement coordinator at Alliance for the Great Lakes; and Mark Fisher, president and CEO of the Council of the Great Lakes Region, joined Luttenton to speak with media and volunteers, highlighting the importance of keeping the lakeshore clean.
Thirty million Americans get their drinking water from the Great Lakes, which represents 84% of the surface fresh water in North America, Fisher said.
“The Great Lakes are an incredibly important natural resource for our economy and environment,” Fisher said. “Research estimates that upwards of 20 million pounds of plastics can be flowing into the Great Lakes every year through different sources and pathways.”
Al Steinman, the Allen and Helen Hunting Research Professor at AWRI, said in an interview with WWJ-AM that reducing single-use plastics would be a good start to eliminating plastic waste in the Great Lakes. During his last sabbatical in Scotland, Steinman said he noticed one store added a surcharge for plastic bags.
“We should be looking at the possibility of banning single-use plastics or taxing them,” Steinman said. “One store in Edinburgh added five cents to your total bill as a disincentive to not use plastics and bring your own bag.”
The BeBot, and its water-bound companion, the Pixie Drone, will be deployed three times a week to Pere Marquette Park this summer, usually in support of a group of volunteers who will comb the beach, Luttenton said.
Preliminary trials with BeBot at Pere Marquette Park last summer by Hickox and instructor Jamie Cross yielded more than 6,000 pieces of materials, ranging from wood and clamshells to human-derived materials such as cigarette butts, glass, metal and plastics, Luttenton said.
“The important part is that 65% of the material that BeBot collected here last year was plastics and of that, 60% of it was within the three centimeter size range,” he said.
“They go back into our waterways, and they potentially become part of the Great Lakes food chain, which will, or very likely will, have a negative impact on the biology of our Great Lakes ecosystems.”
While the robots will be operated and housed by AWRI, the funding for their purchase by the Council of the Great Lakes came from a $1.5 million donation, courtesy of Meijer.
Similar robots will be deployed at 18 beaches and water locations throughout Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin this summer.
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