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.

In late March, a severe ice storm struck the northern part of Michigan.

Tree branches and limbs, weighed down by ice, broke and fell to the ground, leaving towering toothpick trees behind. Many roads, campgrounds, forests, boat launches and other facilities managed by the state were closed as a result. 

Months later, most areas have reopened to the public, but the Michigan Department of Natural Resources is warning visitors to be cautious and expect some trail and road closures to still be in place for their safety. 

Most trails, campgrounds open

The DNR staff went to work to ensure all campgrounds opened at the start of the season on May 15. Some state forests and boat access sites lagged behind, but most are open and ready for Fourth of July weekend.

Kerry Heckman, from the DNR’s Ice Storm Response team, said that travelers should be aware that some roads running through state forests are blocked off. Likewise, some trails may be blocked for visitor safety. 

“If you are going to be just in the forest itself, just be aware that there are a lot of hazards that remain,” Heckman warned, adding that trees that are leaning or limbs caught in the tree canopy are still at risk of falling suddenly. 

She said parts of State Parks Onaway, Clear Lake and Petoskey are temporarily closed. Additionally, Cheboygan State Park is closed for the summer for regularly scheduled updates unrelated to the ice storm. 

Forest recovery efforts continue

It will take a while for the forest to fully recover from the cold snap, Heckman said.

 ”We’ll be working for many years to replant, and bringing the forest back to what they were prior to the storm,” she said.

Heckman says the DNR is also working to salvage fallen trees for timber as fallen limbs are cleared.

Finding new uses for the fallen wood and clearing it out is essential to minimize potential harms to the environment, though the dead branches have benefits as well. 

Long-term impacts on the environment

The influx of fallen timber and moisture leads to a number of environmental impacts, Heckman said.

Forest health is a concern due to the rapid change, but the woods are resilient. 

The dead wood will provide food for woodpeckers and pests like the pine bark beetle, whose population is expected to explode and cause further damage to trees. Exposed wood is also vulnerable to diseases.

One additional danger of having so much timber on the forest floor is providing fuel for potential wildfires, she said.

The open canopy gives room for new plant growth, including that of invasive species.

As the fallen branches decompose, they will replenish the soil. This — in addition to the moisture delivered by the storm — will promote the growth of fungi.

“For people who love morel mushrooms, that’s going to be amazing,” said Heckman.

This story is part of WDET’s ongoing series, The Detroit Tree Canopy Project.