Robots Are Coming To Milwaukee Beaches

Plastic cleaning robot at south shore beach. Photo taken July 24, 2024 by Graham Kilmer.

The future is here; there’s plastic everywhere and robots are picking it up.

Two robots, not autonomous but still resembling science fiction, were on display at South Shore Beach Wednesday morning picking up plastic and other litter. They are the latest effort by the Plastic Free MKE coalition to push the issue of plastic pollution to the fore.

The robots were donated by the Council for the Great Lakes Region (CGLR), a bi-national organization promoting environmental sustainability, and the retail giant Meijer.

The robots excel at picking up the tiny fragments of plastic that larger beach raking equipment and people-powered beach cleanups tend to miss, said Mark Fisher, CGLR CEO. But they are also an important visual reminder that keeping natural areas clear of plastic is an unending battle that environmental groups and public stewards, like Milwaukee County Parks, wage every day.

Plastic Free MKE is led by the Milwaukee Riverkeeper, the City of Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. It began with a “group of volunteers trying to make a difference,” said Jennifer Bolger Breceda, Riverkeeper executive director. It has since found institutional backing and includes more than 60 local organizations and businesses.

The initiative has crafted messages tailor-made to convince Milwaukeeans that plastic pollution is a problem. For example, the Plastic Free MKE website notes: “Because we’re drowning in plastic, beer brewed with water from the Great Lakes now contains 4.05 man-made particles per liter, 99% of which are plastic fibers.” Last year, the group launched a campaign called Plastic Free July encouraging local residents to try to go a whole month without single-use plastics.

The new beach-cleaning robots will be deployed at Milwaukee County Parks beaches, including Bradford Beach and South Shore Beach. Milwaukee County is also a member of the coalition. County Executive David Crowley said the county is a “proud member” of the coalition and that ensuring public assets are free from pollution is “absolutely” part of the county’s strategic plan to achieve racial equity and make Milwaukee the healthiest county in Wisconsin.

“We have to make sure that we’re ensuring these spaces, that we’re preserving these spaces,” Crowley said.

The new machines can sift through and clean up an area equivalent to six basketball courts in two hours, Bolger Breceda said. The robots, which come in two variants, cost approximately $60,000 for the larger version, called BeBot, and $30,000 for the smaller. Meijer and CGLR are donating the machines and providing grants for the equipment and manpower necessary to operate them.

But that’s not enough to completely tackle the problem, even just as South Shore. That’s why the coalition is hoping they will serve as effective ambassadors for the cause of Plastic Free MKE and other organizations focused on plastic pollution.

“At the end of the day, the technology in and of itself is not going to solve the problem. Doing this entire beach with this technology would take forever,” Fisher said. “But it’s a great way of understanding what is showing up, why it’s showing up.”