Report Looks At Plastic Pollution In The Great Lakes

lakemichigan3-16
lakemichigan3-16

Environmental groups are hoping a New Year’s resolution for 2017 will be to keep the Great Lakes cleaner. A report by Rochester Institute of Technology estimates 22 million pounds of plastic ends up in the water every year. Lead author Matthew Hoffman says this study is the first picture of the true scale of plastic pollution in the Great Lakes.

“Just sort of seeing the scale, I think, is sort of eye-opening, and that’s sort of one of the things we hope to convey with this.”

The study found more than half of the plastic pollution entering the Great Lakes goes into Lake Michigan, followed by lakes Erie and Ontario. Hoffman adds the recent ban on microbeads in cosmetics really hasn’t made much of a difference.