We’ve all heard about volunteers who head out for the occasional beach clean-up. But on Monday, a robot took on the task in Traverse City.
The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay hosted a demonstration of BeBot: an eco-friendly, remote-controlled robot. BeBot rolled out at Clinch Park Beach to show how it mechanically sifts sand to remove plastic waste and other debris from the beach.
“It’s kind of a fun way to engage people in cleaning up plastic,” Christine Crissman, the Executive Director of the Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay, said. “So one of the most exciting things is that it looks like a really cool robot. And so every time we’re out here, there’s people who come by and ask what we’re doing and we can talk with them and talk with them about the importance of making sure that plastic stays out of the Great Lakes. So even more than, you know, cleaning up the plastic, it’s a really great educational tool and it helps us connect with people in a new way.”
“It has a sand sifter in the back. So you can lower that down into the sand however far you want to go, up to a couple of inches, and you just sort of drive it along and it sifts out that sand,” Crissman continues. “So then when we’re done, we can place a big tarp underneath and we can shake out all of the stuff that was in there. And then we want to look and see what we’re collecting. So are we getting rocks? Are we getting plastic? Are we getting cigarette butts? What kinds of things are we getting?”
Crissman says the goal is to catch the trash before it makes its way into the waterways and affects the ecosystem. “There are tens of thousands of people who rely on the Great Lakes for their drinking water. We rely on it for our recreation. And basically what we’re trying to do is to help keep some of the plastics that are littering our Great Lakes from getting into the water in the first place.”
Thanks to a $1 million dollar donation Meijer made to the Council of the Great Lakes Region Foundation, The Watershed Center will be deploying the BeBot regularly at area beaches starting spring 2023.
“We have a partnership with Meijer, the Council of Great Lakes Regions and the Great Lakes plastic cleanup that has provided us with this BeBot,” Crissman says. “We were working with our local Sea Grant Extension agent. And Meijer was the major sponsor that donated the funds. So it kind of was a big collaborative effort of people who are sort of already engaged in this. And that donation really helped in order for us to get the equipment and kick things off. And then now we’re sort of doing the educational piece that’ll that’ll wrap it all together.”
“We just got it. And so we’ve taken it out a few times just to see what it’s capable of. We’re really hoping that in 2023 we’re going to have several beach cleanups, educational events, we’re going to do some testing it out, maybe do some work with the city as they’re doing their raking, and we go in afterwards. So there’s lots of possibilities for ways that we’re going to be using it,” Crissman says.
“This is part of a larger project, the Great Lakes, plastic cleanup. And so they’re taking this similar data from all over the Great Lakes and they’re pooling it and looking at what kinds of debris are we getting in different places and helping use that to help inform policy and educate folks,” Crissman says.” But also because it’s a cool looking robot, it’s going to help a little bit more in that education too. So when we’re out here using it, when there are folks who are visiting, we can also help educate those folks as well so that when they come, they’re respecting this place as much as we do, whereas we live here.”
Crissman says they’ll also bring out a Pixie Drone next spring. “We will be introducing one that actually cleans the water as well. We don’t have all the equipment for that yet, but that’s another exciting thing that we’ll have in 2023. So we’ll be able to go out into marinas and do something very similar but in the water. So we’re looking at cleaning out our beaches and our water from our plastic. So that’ll be to come.”
© 2023 - 910 Media Group
