Beach bot helps remove plastic at Ludington’s Stearns Park Beach

LUDINGTON — BeBot, a robotic beach cleaning machine, will team up with A Few Friends for the Environment of the World (AFFEW) as they clean Stearns Park Beach in Ludington.

BeBot previously worked to clean up Grand Traverse Bay with The Watershed Center.

Brought to Ludington by the Annis Water Resources Institute (AWRI) at Grand Valley State University, BeBot can remove plastic and other waste materials from sandy beaches and even sift out smaller particles than traditional equipment.

While no trash is good, the main focus is on plastics. It’s estimated that 20 million pounds of plastic enter the Great Lake annually, so it’s important to get it before it does.

“All the plastics that have been produced today, which make up like 8.3 billion metric tons, only 20% of those go to recycling or they’re burned. The rest ends up in the environment. Plastics, they never really go away in the environment. They just break down until they get smaller and smaller,” said Jamie Cross, outreach and science educator for AWRI.

There will be a public demonstration of the robot at 7 p.m. Wednesday night at Stearns Park.