Set for Saturday, April 20 is a beach cleanup event at Jean Klock Park in Benton Harbor.
Carol Drake with Friends of Jean Klock Park tells us they’re holding the event in conjunction with the Alliance for the Great Lakes Adopt a Beach program. She says they pick up a lot of plastic, especially microplastics.
“It’s hard to identify because it breaks up and gets smaller and smaller into little microplastics, but we do find little beads called nurdles that are part of the plastic mold injection mold process,” Drake said. “They get released into the lakes and they’re finding them more and more. They get into our water, they get into our food, they get into our bottled beer and our bottled water, and I guess we’re eating about a credit card’s worth of plastic every week.”
Drake says the April 20 event happens as volunteers at beaches all over the Great Lakes do the same. Friends of Jean Klock Park has been doing cleanup events at the park since 2003.
“It’s been a very gratifying experience and it’s fun and it’s interesting to see people’s reaction when they find some of these things.”
Anyone who wants to attend can register online and bring along drinking water and gloves. Drake says the event will run from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.
There will also be beach cleanup events the same day in Union Pier, Bridgman, St. Joseph, Hagar Township, and South Haven.
