Looking for a volunteer effort to help keep Michigan’s Great Lakes beaches clean? Why not adopt a beach?
The Alliance for the Great Lakes offers a program called Adopt-a- Beach, a volunteer program of about 10,000 participants (individuals, families, schools, and businesses) that reaches all areas touched by the Great Lakes, from Minnesota to New York State. Volunteers not only keep beaches clean during a one day sweep in September (September 21 in 2013), but they can also adopt a beach as a year round effort, monitoring the water and entering the data into the Adopt-a-Beach online system.
The Alliance for the Great Lakes website offers numerous ways to become involved for a day, or a year. Those interested can volunteer for an existing team or sign up to lead a new team. Teams local to Monroe County include the Bolles Harbor Helpers, Belle Isle Beach Friends, and the UT Lake Erie Center in Ohio.
Want more information before committing? Contact the Alliance by email at alliance@greatlakes.org or by phone at 616-850-0745.
No time to volunteer? Every beach visitor can help by taking the “Healthy Beaches” pledge to not feed the birds and to carry their own trash off the beach area. Seagulls, raccoons, and other wildlife are attracted to garbage such as leftover food, which makes up almost half of the trash collected by Alliance volunteers. In turn, wildlife leaves waste on the beach which can cause contamination. Take the Pledge.
Book Description: Want to make a difference in the world, but don’t know where to begin? Now you can. Here is the guide to lots of exciting ways that are more personal and fun than merely writing a check. For every day of the year, 365 ways to change the world is packed with information and ideas that don’t take a lot of special skills to put into action, but will achieve something positive.
Book Description: Schools, workplaces, and organizations are hungry to get families involved in meaningful service opportunities and make an impact in the community. Doing Good Together answers the growing demand for family volunteerism with hands-on service projects focused on easing poverty, promoting literacy,
Book Description: Speaking to the reluctant volunteer in everyone, Levinson boosts our “Volunteer IQ” with specific advice on how, where, and why we can help. He candidly addresses the benefits and pitfalls of volunteering. Combined with a comprehensive appendix listing, online and print resources, this book provides both the motivation and the action plan to get every community working.
Book Description: A follow-up to Ashworth’s The Late, Great Lakes. Through personal observation, research, and interviews, the author creates a detailed picture of the status of the Great Lakes at the end of the 20th century. Issues examined include the invasion of exotic species, the rise and fall of the RAP process for pollution cleanup, a growing public mistrust of government action, the loss of habitat and biodiversity, and urban sprawl along the shores of the Lakes.
Book Description: Dempsey weaves the natural character and phenomena of the Great Lakes and stories of the schemes, calamities, and unusual human residents of the Basin with the history of their environmental exploitation and recovery. Contrasting the incomparable beauty and complexity of the Lakes, and the poetry, folklore, and citizen action they have inspired, with the disasters that short-sighted human folly has inflicted on the ecosystem, Dempsey makes this history both engaging and relevant to today’s debates and decisions.
Book Description: The story of politicians and engineers who, driven by hubris and handicapped by ignorance, demanded that the Seaway be built at any cost. It is the tragic tale of government agencies that could have prevented ocean freighters from laying waste to Great Lakes ecosystems, but failed to act until it was too late. Blending science with compelling personal accounts, this book is the first comprehensive account of how inviting transoceanic freighters into N. America’s freshwater seas transformed these wondrous lakes.
Book Description: Chronicle of a five-day canoe trip made by two Detroit Free Press journalists up the abused Rouge River in metro Detroit. Although too polluted for public recreation and too log-jammed for a motorboat, reporter Joel Thurtell and photographer Patricia Beck decided to travel up the Rouge to explore not only the river’s industrial side but also its beautiful and hidden urban wilderness.
