A Lake Superior cleanup with a bigger goal — one million pieces of litter pulled from the Great Lakes — is coming to Marquette next month.
A Million-Piece Mission
Most cleanup efforts measure success in trash bags. This one counts every single piece.
Great Lakes Great Responsibility — GLGR for short — is a marine-debris group chasing a goal that sounds almost impossible: pull one million pieces of litter out of the Great Lakes basin.
And they’re not just talking about it. As of late May, the group had already removed nearly 680,000 pieces of trash from the lakes — more than two-thirds of the way to a million.
The mission, in their words, is to build a culture of responsibility among the people and businesses who share the Great Lakes, all working toward water that’s free of marine debris. One bottle cap, one fishing line, one foam cup at a time.
The Lake Superior Cleanup Comes To Marquette
After stops in Hamilton, Ontario; Buffalo, New York; Port Huron; and Traverse City, GLGR is bringing its “Lake Superior declutter” to Marquette.
Mark the date: Founder’s Landing, Tuesday, June 16, from 4 to 6 p.m.
It’s open to anyone who wants to give a couple hours and help. No special skills, no gear required — just show up at the waterfront and start picking. (Check GLGR’s page closer to the date for any last-minute details or weather changes.)
Two hours of your evening, a stretch of Lake Superior shoreline left cleaner than you found it. That’s the whole ask.
Why It Hits Different Up Here
For a lot of the country, the Great Lakes are a vacation. For Yoopers, Lake Superior is the backyard, the drinking water, and the heartbeat of half of what makes this place home.
GLGR’s executive director, Meag Schwartz, told TV6 that every piece of plastic pulled from the water “tells a bigger story” — about convenience, consumption, and how we treat our waterways. Up here, that story is personal. The litter that washes up on a Marquette beach isn’t a distant problem; it’s sitting on the lake people swim in, fish, and drink from.
Marine debris isn’t just ugly, either. Plastic, fishing line, tires, and the rest tangle wildlife, foul habitat, and break down into microplastics that never really go away. Every piece pulled out is one that never gets the chance.
Yoopers Were Already On It
Here’s the part that should make you proud: the U.P. didn’t wait for a touring crew to start protecting the big lake.
For years, the Superior Watershed Partnership’s Great Lakes Climate Corps has been hauling debris off Lake Superior shorelines — tons of it — working alongside the City of Marquette, the Bay Mills Indian Community, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, and local dive teams who pull junk straight off the lakebed.
Project manager Tyler Penrod put it simply to TV6: the lake is “our drinking water, it’s where we play, it’s where we recreate.” Keeping it clean isn’t a project up here. It’s just what you do.
GLGR’s visit adds another set of hands to work Yoopers have been doing all along.
Come Down To The Water
A million pieces of trash is a staggering number. But it only gets there the same way it got to 680,000 — one person, one beach, one evening at a time.
On June 16, that beach is Founder’s Landing, and that person could be you.
Will you be at Founder’s Landing on June 16? Tag a Yooper who’d never walk past trash on a Lake Superior beach 👇
The featured image on this article is an AI-generated illustration. All facts are independently researched and sourced.
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