Visitors sometimes leave stuff behind at Great Lakes beaches. Broken pieces from plastic toys or bits of styrene from coolers can get lost in the sand.  

One of the most common pieces of plastic trash found are cigarette butts. 

Here’s some background on that. 

Four years ago, I interviewed people who volunteered through the Alliance for the Great Lakes Adopt-a-Beach program. They were cleaning up trash at Duck Lake State Park. 

Lake Michigan is connected to Duck Lake by a small channel. When the big lake gets high, plastic trash is pushed into the smaller lake by wind and waves. Then when the water recedes, a lot of the plastic gets caught in the vegetation on either side of that connecting channel. A lot of plastic. 

I visited the Duck Lake State Park beach again two years ago and did another microplastics story, which included information about recovering plastic as a recyclable resources for a line of outdoor wear. 

This year, I went back to Duck Lake for a third time. 

It had been raining earlier in the morning. When I arrived, it was a little cloudy, but there was a nice breeze coming off Lake Michigan. 

My plan was to spend an hour picking up trash along the road adjacent to the beach and on the beach itself. I wanted to see if there was a pattern of a lot of cigarette butts on the beach. 

I had a small bag for cigarette butts. I also took a larger garbage bag, because I figured I’d pick up the other trash I found.  

I was going to compare this beach with another one in the afternoon, so I decided to limit the time to one hour.  

In that time, I picked up 158 cigarette butts.  

I had thought I might find 60. Obviously, my estimate was way off. 

An employee at the park told me some people park their cars next to the beach to enjoy the view of Lake Michigan, and then toss their cigarette butts on the ground while they’re there. There’s a bit of irony there, right? 

The fibers in those cigarette filters can quickly break down into microplastics and that’s not good. 

“Wildlife can be ingesting it. It can end up in our drinking water source for 40 million people. It’s also just, you know, adding to the litter on the beach itself, of course, having impact on the enjoyment of the beach, things like that,” said Olivia Reda. She organizes beach cleanups for the Alliance for the Great Lakes. 

“Eighty-six percent of the pieces that we find in a given season are composed of either partially or fully of plastic. So, cigarette butts, again being part of that problem, you know, breaking down into small pieces, less than 5 millimeters, end up in the Great Lakes, or they can end up in the Great Lakes,” Reda said. 

Back in 2018, I interviewed Mary Kosuth, from Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis. She found microplastics in every municipal water supply her research checked in cities that pull water from the lakes.

She also found microplastics in Great Lakes beer, although the amount didn’t necessarily correspond with the microplastics in the tap water supply. That might be because the grains used in the beer often come in sacks made of woven polypropylene. 

She said even if plastic itself is inert, additives or chemicals absorbed from the environment could be harmful to human health. 

“We found in marine environments, at least, these plastic particles are very good at absorbing chemicals from the water,” Kosuth said, adding “So things like PCB, DDT, brominated flame retardants, things like these can actually form a coating on the outside of the plastic particles, which means that we would be ingesting higher amounts of that.” 

Is that really that much of an issue in the Great Lakes? A study out of the Rochester Institute of Technology estimates 22 million pounds of plastic debris enters the Great Lakes from the U.S. and Canada each year. 

My day on the road was not finished. I still had more trash to pick up. My next stop was Ludington State Park about an hour away. It’s a much bigger beach and has a lot more visitors.  

One of the things that could help is more bins for litter and recycling. That’s what Andrea Densham has found. She’s Senior Policy Advisor for the Alliance for the Great Lakes.  

She says scolding people who smoke for throwing their cigarette butts on the beach doesn’t help much. She says a different approach is better. For example, signs at the park encouraging people to join together to keep the beach clean are helpful. 

“Maybe the best answer is both signage, reminding folks that birds and children enjoy the beaches and that having cigarette butts is really damaging.” 

That is, damaging to both the experience at the beach and to the environment.  

She said having more trash cans at or near beaches would help. 

“There aren’t actually enough in many places, both recycling and litter bins, right by the beaches. And that causes some unnecessary eye-trash, I think.” 

Densham said receptacles for cigarettes and cigars are also needed.  

Overall she said all plastic trash is a major problem and society needs to eliminate single-use plastic products as much as possible. 

After wandering around Ludington State Park’s expansive beach for a while, I only found four cigarette butts. The road to the park runs along the beach for about three miles. There are places to park your car along the way. I found about a half-dozen cigarette butts at each of those places.  

I talked to a guy who’d been walking the beach and he said he only saw a couple of cigarette butts along the way. So, not a lot of that kind of trash compared to what I found at Duck Lake State Park earlier in the day. 

So, I tracked down the Park Manager, Jim Gallie, and asked him about that. 

“At least once per month, we have volunteers that come out to the park and they have segments of the beach that they walk and the pick up litter. They pick up cigarette butts, any debris that they find. Anything that they find that is larger than something they can handle, they report that to us. So, we work closely with the Friends of Ludington State Park on that. And that’s, I think at least one reason why are beaches are in pretty good shape,” he said. 

Not all the state, county, township, and city beaches have that extra help on a regular basis. 

But there are annual cleanups and a Great Lakes-wide effort is coming up. 

On September 20th is International Coastal Cleanup. The Alliance for the Great Lakes expect thousands of its Adopt-a-Beach volunteers to clear the beaches of trash at sites across the Great Lakes. I imagine that will include tens of thousands of cigarette butts. If you want to help, take latex or nitrile gloves with you. Picking up cigarette butts is kind of nasty and smelly. Trust me on that one. 

A couple strolls the beach near the main swimming area at Ludington State Park.

Environmental groups gathered over the weekend to mark the 15th anniversary of an oil spill into the Kalamazoo River. The message they delivered: that the oil spill was a warning about what could happen if an oil pipeline running through the Great Lakes isn’t shut down.

Tent booths were set up to represent different groups that responded to what happened 15 years ago when Enbridge’s Line 6B burst. 1.2 million gallons of oil were recovered from that tar sands spill along more than 35 miles of the Kalamazoo River and one of its tributaries near Marshall, Michigan.

The Michigan Climate Action Network organized the event at Historic Bridge Park near Battle Creek. The site was chosen because it was part of the long stretch of contaminated shoreline.

Denise Keele, executive director of the Michigan Climate Action Network, said no one has forgotten the damage caused by Line 6B. That’s why they worry about Line 5.
“The message remains the same: to shut down Line 5 and no oil tunnel. We are here today on the 15th anniversary of the Kalamazoo River oil spill so that history does not repeat itself. We should learn from our mistakes.”

Keele added that another mistake is the continued use of fossil fuels, which she said is causing climate disruption.

Nichole Keway Biber, Mid-Michigan organizer for Michigan Clean Water Action and a citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, pointed out that Line 5 is more than 30 years older than Line 6B was when it ruptured.

“The many places that 645-mile-long pipeline crosses over waters is close by to the Great Lakes, beyond just the absurdity of that four-mile-stretch beneath the Straits. That’s all a threat. That pipeline is over 70-years-old.”

Some of the environmental leaders who spoke included Sean McBrearty, coordinator of the Oil and Water Don’t Mix campaign. He talked about the negligence that led to the 2010 spill.

“This was entirely man-made. And it was only as big as it became because the negligence of the people who now the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the federal government are asking us to trust the Great Lakes with.”

McBrearty said the devastating Line 6B disaster—one of the largest inland oil spills in the U.S.—sparked a movement.

“A movement that says never again are we going to let major corporations like Enbridge spill oil into our rivers. A movement that says we’re going to protect our Great Lakes. And make sure the same company responsible for this oil spill does not strike again, this time with a larger pipeline running more oil in the heart of the Great Lakes.”
Currently, the Michigan Department of

Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) is taking public comments on permit applications submitted by Enbridge. The company wants to build a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac to house a new segment of Line 5. The existing pipeline sits on the lakebed connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

Beth Wallace, Great Lakes climate and energy director for the National Wildlife Federation, said EGLE is falling short in its responsibility. She said the agency should be reviewing not only the impacts at the tunnel’s entry and exit points but also the broader environmental damage tunneling could cause.

“Who are the decisions really serving? They’re not the people of Michigan. They’re not the tribes who have stewarded these waters for generations, and not the millions that rely on the Great Lakes.”

When asked what the groups are willing to do to stop Line 5 and the proposed tunnel, Wallace said that if EGLE does not do its job fully, the National Wildlife Federation will take the agency to court.

Nichole Keway Biber responded: “Our Indigenous people and our nations and our allies aren’t going to let this happen. We cannot. We cannot. So, if they want us to be up there camping out, and bring our drums, and bring our medicine, we’re ready to do that.”

Enbridge responded in a statement, saying it is committed to safeguarding the Great Lakes and welcomes the public comment process now underway.

EGLE is accepting public comments on Enbridge’s proposed tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac until August 29.

Lester Graham, reporting for Michigan Public News