By Brian Vernellis

GVSU Communications

Grand Valley State University’s Annis Water Resources Institute (AWRI) will showcase an innovative, remote-controlled beach-cleaning device designed and deployed to collect refuse and plastic litter from Michigan beaches along the Great Lakes shorelines.

A Few Friends for the Environment of the World (AFFEW), a Ludington-based environmental nonprofit group, has invited the AWRI to publicly demonstrate the litter capture and cleanup device, called the BeBot, for an upcoming beach cleanup scheduled for July 17, from 7-8:30 p.m., at Ludington’s Stearns Park.

Models estimate as much as 22 million pounds of plastic every year could be entering the Great Lakes, the source of drinking water for 40 million Americans and Canadians. Plastic in the lakes and surrounding watersheds will cost hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars annually to combat.

Cleanup technology

Since 2022, Meijer has donated close to $2 million to the Council of the Great Lakes Region Foundation to expand the deployment of two plastic litter cleanup technologies, the BeBot and Pixie Drone. This is part of the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup Program, a joint initiative of the Council of the Great Lakes Region and Pollution Probe in Canada.

Jamie Cross, outreach and science education instructor at AWRI, will be at Stearns Park to talk about BeBot and AWRI’s participation in the project.

The public is invited

AFFEW invites the public to watch BeBot in action as well as volunteer in the cleaning of Stearns Park’s beach.

Participants should meet at the south concession stand in Stearns Park. Bags and gloves will be provided.

For more information about this event or AFFEW, visit affew.org.