The trashing of Lake Erie’s beaches
By Samantha Skerlec
The sands at Sims Park Beach in Euclid, Ohio, are as colorful as a Picasso painting. It is not natural color, though, in this case. As far as the eye can see, little fragments of plastic are scattered among the sands as if confetti were sprinkled over the beach. In all shapes, sizes and colors, the plastic sits in the sand undisturbed until a strong wave creeps up to shore and washes the pieces back into the lake.
Take a stroll across the beach and one will find even more than just plastic bits. The beach is cluttered with plastic bottles, empty cans, plastic bags, cigarette butts and other miscellaneous objects. A broken-up lawn chair can be found in the brush on the far east side of the strip. There are food wrappers half-buried in the sand as well as plastic straws and bottle caps. Walk a bit further and it is a similar sight. Trash litters the sand and vegetation as far as the eye can see. There is nowhere to look without seeing an array of colors unnatural to the beaches of Lake Erie.
Each year about 280 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide, according to a study from State University of New York. A great deal of this plastic ends up in our landfills or in our waters. The concentration of plastic in the Great Lakes is one of the greatest out of all of the bodies of water worldwide, according to???. This plastic debris is harmful to both wildlife and human health. When an animal ingests plastics, it can lead to death or serious injury. Consequently, humans consuming fish and other aquatic life that has plastic in its body can become prone to serious health risks as well. The chemicals in the plastics can spread to the tissues of the organism and cause serious harm to itself and to its consumer.
The Adopt-a-Beach program, run through the Alliance for the Great Lakes, is an organization of volunteers who clean up trash on the Great Lakes beaches. Along with cleaning up, the volunteers record data on what kind of trash is found. Each piece of litter is tallied in an online database and the data is then compiled so that it can be compared from year to year. This information is important when attempting to identify the problem areas and to create solutions to improve the quality of our lakes and beaches. A past Alliance for the Great Lakes report disclosed the organization having 2,298 volunteers, but recent tallies say that over 15,000 people participated in a total of 1,388 cleanups in 2016 through the Adopt-a-Beach program. Nearly 35,000 volunteer hours were logged cleaning up Great Lakes beaches. That is equivalent to 1,458 days, or 4 years. This is an astounding increase in the number of people giving up their time for the health of the Great Lakes.
Recent tallies say that over 15,000 people participated in a total of 1,388 cleanups in 2016 through the Adopt-a-Beach program. Nearly 35,000 volunteer hours were logged cleaning up Great Lakes beaches. That is equivalent to 1,458 days, or 4 years. This is an astounding increase in the number of people giving up their time for the health of the Great Lakes.
A paper by Anna Vincent and a team of researchers from Loyola University of Chicago states that most of the litter on beaches comes from consumer goods left behind by beachgoers from neighboring urban areas. According to a review by Alexander Driedger and others from the University of Waterloo, more than 80 percent of beach trash is plastics.
Although chunks of plastic can be seen in every direction you look on the beach, Great Lakes Echo, an environmental news organization, reports that most of the plastic in the water is actually one-tenth of an inch or smaller, which makes it more difficult to notice this problem. These are called microplastics and have the potential to be more harmful to wildlife than larger pieces of plastic. A recent Adopt-a-Beach data report calls this “tiny trash”, which they found to make up 34 percent of the litter on Ohio beaches. This value is similar to the levels recorded in other neighboring states. On the shores of New York, however, tiny trash makes up 43 percent of beach litter. For other states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, tiny trash only makes up about 25 percent of litter composition.
Most of the plastic in the water is actually one-tenth of an inch or smaller, which makes it more difficult to notice this problem. These are called microplastics and have the potential to be more harmful to wildlife than larger pieces of plastic. A recent Adopt-a-Beach data report calls this “tiny trash”, which they found to make up 34 percent of the litter on Ohio beaches.
Destinee Henton, representative of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, when asked about the annual reports, says, “We share the results with media and our partners throughout the Great Lakes to not only tell the story of our success but the impact of the program.” The report is made available to the public, and is sent out to team leaders around the Great Lakes region. Additional data is also available upon request.
Joe Mruzek, John Carroll University environmental science major and member of the campus Environmental Issues Group, has participated in four of these cleanup events put on by the Adopt-a-Beach program so far.
“It is really shocking how littered the beaches are,” he said in an interview. “I went on my first cleanup and expected to pick up a few bottles and candy wrappers, but to see all of the bits of plastic and trash lying around was saddening. It took hours just to clean up a small portion of the beach. I can’t imagine how much trash there is on larger beaches, or all of the Lake Erie beaches combined, for that matter.”
When asked about data collection for the Adopt-a-Beach records, Mruzek said, “The JCU Environmental Issues Group has collected data for the program. It is really simple. They send you a checklist in the mail. When at the beach cleaning up, each time you pick up a piece of trash you count it. The team leader, in our case the president of the group, tallies the final total for each type of trash and sends the results sheet to the Alliance for the Great Lakes. It is a really easy process and does not require much extra work.”
From scouring the Adopt-a-Beach website, it appears to be as easy as Mruzek says. There is a page to sign up to be a team leader. Once signed up, the Alliance for the Great Lakes will send the volunteer a startup packet with a data collection sheet, instructions on cleanups, and even a team leader t-shirt. Signing up for a cleanup is easy to do as well, with simple instructions given along the way.
The Adopt-a-Beach report is promising to many that there is a healthy future for the Great Lakes. “It is pretty discouraging going back to the same beach a few months after a cleanup to see even more litter than what was there before. It will look like no one has ever picked a piece of trash up from the sand in its history. But that is why we are there, to clean up the beach. Knowing that a few hours out of my day cleaning up is making a difference in the environmental health of the planet is a rewarding feeling to say the least,” Mruzek concluded.
Thanks to the volunteers, Great Lakes beaches are regularly cleaned up in order to reduce the amount of trash present in the sands at a given time. Reducing the use of plastic consumer products is proposed as a necessary step in preserving our beaches in addition to regular cleanups. These actions may not fix the problem completely, but are a step towards clean, healthy lakes and beaches to support generations of residents and beachgoers to come.
