Since 2021, a collaboration between Grand Valley’s Annis Water Resources Institute and the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup initiative, along with the generous support of retailer Meijer, has removed thousands of pieces of plastic debris and other refuse from Great Lakes shorelines.
An eco-friendly, beach-cleaning drone operated by AWRI completed its fourth summer sweeping and sifting the beach at Muskegon’s Pere Marquette Park.
This year, the drone removed more than 4,700 pieces of plastic debris and other pieces of manmade waste, said Jamie Cross, lead technician on the project. More than 3,200 items — 68 percent of the total — were hard plastic fragments, which Cross noted is a critical dataset for understanding plastic pollution.
“Hard plastic fragments are broken pieces of larger plastic items, and once they break down, it is hard to determine the origin of the item,” said Cross. “The drone is good at getting those plastic items off the beach and out of the environment, so they don't continue to break down and become microplastics.”
The drone — named the Laker Raker in a Meijer-sponsored contest — collected more than 300 pieces of cigarette butts, 200 pieces of firework debris, 160 foam pieces, 65 bottle caps and 65 straws from April through September.
Despite the Great Lakes’ environmental and economic importance, an estimated 22 million pounds of plastic enter the lakes each year, creating a costly challenge for communities across the region.
Community outreach and education are also major components of the effort, Cross said. The AWRI and the Laker Raker participated in 12 outreach events, including the Great Lakes Surf Festival, and assisted local partners such as the Boys & Girls Club of Muskegon, Adopt-a-Beach teams, Meijer/Unilever groups and the Michigan Recycling Coalition Conference in beach cleanups.
The Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup is a binational initiative led by Pollution Probe in Canada and the U.S. charitable arm of the Council of the Great Lakes Region, the CGLR Foundation.
Cleanup work spans beaches in Michigan’s Muskegon and Mason counties as well as locations in Northern Michigan, Detroit, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Meijer’s environmental commitment has fueled the program’s expansion, too. In April 2022, Meijer donated $1 million to the CGLR Foundation to fund eight drones.
Meijer contributed an additional $250,000 donation to the GGLR Foundation in April 2024 to launch drones in Wisconsin, with plans for continued expansion throughout the Great Lakes region.
