A BeBot moves along a beach near Chicago as volunteers pick up trash along the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Submitted photo
Bots need help cleaning the Great Lakes’ shores
Let’s talk trash.
Every year, Hoosiers generate 9.4 million tons of solid waste. That’s discarded waste from homes, businesses and construction projects, among other sources.
Of that, less than 17% or around 2 million tons is collected for recycling and composting. That’s far below the goal of reaching 50% for the nation (currently at 32%) and Indiana (currently 21%).
Most of our trash, about 70%, is dumped into landfills. Those statistics from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management emphasize the reasonable and practical need for Hoosiers to recycle more.
But we also need to reevaluate how we litter and where we litter. People leave trash on roadways, parks, rest stops and beaches — all across the landscape. Food wrappers blow down streets. Water bottles are left behind at campsites. Thin plastic bags hang from trees.
Among the more noticeable clutter sites is the shore of the Great Lakes. The rest of the country is in the same boat, particularly once-pristine lake beaches and along the shores of the Great Lakes. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin estimate that the Great Lakes take on 22 million tons of trash every year.
To help clean the beaches, the Council of the Great Lakes Region Foundation, a nonprofit environmental group, has launched a high technology initiative to send robots and drones along the shores to scoop up trash.
So far, the technology can only be seen in Wisconsin and Michigan. Meijer kicked in $250,000 last year to support the effort. Five BeBots and four PixieDrones can be seen along beaches in Wisconsin and Michigan.
The robots are particularly useful in detecting micro-plastic debris, pieces of which are often too small to be seen with the naked eye. One BeBot can scour up to 32,000 square feet of lakefront beach per hour.
Now, let’s talk math. Indiana has about 45 miles of shoreline along Lake Michigan. The Indiana Dunes National Park encompasses about 15,300 acres; it surrounds the 2,182-acre Indiana Dunes State Park. Both offer one of the world’s richest ecosystems for fresh water and dunes.
The state park has a three-mile shoreline along the Great Lake. Conservatively estimating that the beach there is at least 150 feet wide, that’s about 2.3 million square feet solely in the state park.
It might take 75 hours for a BeBot to effectively scour the shoreline at the Indiana Dunes State Park. That’s not a bad work week. Except those 3 miles are just a fraction of more than 40 reaching from Michigan to Illinois.
So let’s encourage the state and national park systems to send those BeBots and drones along public land. Equally important, we humans have to assist the robotic refuse collectors.
Outside of the immediate shoreline area of Lake Michigan, this high technology effort should raise awareness across the Midwest of how humans can despoil nature.
Let’s talk clean by removing trash from our beaches, parks, roadways — and essentially everywhere.
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