MANITOWOC, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Along the Lakeshore, unique ways are underway to wage the battle against waste on and under the water.
One drone can scoop up its weight in garbage in no time.
At Blue Rail Beach in Manitowoc, dodging the Lake Michigan surf is a popular pastime. But an old, faded aluminum can and a couple of cigarette butts are also relatively easy to find.
“Marine debris. There’s about 22,000 pounds of plastic waste that go into the Great Lakes every year. It’s kind of a really new issue that people have just started to address,” said Greg Kleinheinz, UW-Oshkosh Environmental Research and Innovation Center Director.
Enter what Kleinheinz calls a possible solution; it’s called a BeBot. The radio-controlled mini-tank can clear this beach in about an hour and a half.
Inside the harbor, students put this rectangular trash-gathering craft through its paces.
“The second is a PixieDrone. It’s an aquatic drone, kind of like a Roomba,” said Kleinheinz.
A third one, is a cylinder called a Seabin, and it was installed at the Manitowoc Marina last year. Garbage swirls below the surface and is collected twice a week.
And a pontoon boat patrols the Lakeshore gathering larger marine debris, like a tire and even a stove, found near Kewaunee.
“The boat itself has picked up over a ton of material, like 2,500 pounds so far this year and about 4,000 pieces of debris,” said Kleinheinz.
“This is a really cool initiative,” said Brandon Harrison, Manitowoc Meijer Store Director.
The project is a partnership between state, federal and international groups.
“We need these machines to keep our beaches safe and clean for the families to come out and use, to get debris off the beaches, we might not see as individuals ourselves too,” said Harrison.
After a few minutes, the BeBot was already collecting trash. Kleinheinz says the multi-pronged attack has an impact.
“A variety of different technologies, all of them removing small amounts of marine debris, or large, depending on what they find, helping to sort of solve one particular problem.”
The Marine Debris Clean-up Program covers 18 sites across the Great Lakes, including shorelines in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio.
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