Pollution report finds vast majority of Great Lakes litter is plastic

CHICAGO -- The Great Lakes provide drinking water for 40 million people, yet 22 million pounds of plastic pollution ends up in them every year.

Volunteers and the Alliance for the Great Lakes have been collecting litter along the shorelines since 1991 through the adopt-a-beach program.

The group is out with a new report based on 20 years of data collected from more than 1,400 beach cleanups on all five Great Lakes.

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They found 86 percent of litter collected is composed of plastic and 40 percent of it falls under what they call the "tiny trash" category That includes plastic, foam and glass pieces measuring two and half centimeters or less.

Those smaller pieces only get smaller and more dangerous.

"They don't go away, they just break down into smaller and smaller pieces they can end up as microplastics and those microplastics can end up in the Great Lakes," Olivia Reda, author of Report, Alliance for the Great Lakes. "We know they're making their way through the food chain. They're making their way into human bodies. microplastics have been found in human blood, lung, stool, breast milk."

The alliance hopes the report will ignite solution-based action from businesses, governments and manufacturers - holding them responsible for what they produce.

You can help too. The Spring Season adopt-a-beach cleanup begins April 26. For more information, visit https://greatlakes.org/event/adopt-a-beach-spring-kickoff-2024/.