Great Lakes plastic pollution · the organizational map
Twenty-two million pounds of plastic enter the Great Lakes every year. So do two hundred organizations' worth of resistance.
The work is everywhere: eight states, two countries, tribal nations . What's been missing is the picture: what's working, what's aligned, and what's still unclaimed. Here it is, drawn.
Connections you can only see from here
These two want the same law
Ecology Center · Alliance for the Great Lakes
Independently asking for producer responsibility (EPR), an alignment that's invisible from outside the field's own networks.
Your plastic, their beach
Chicago & Milwaukee · Michigan's west coast
Particle modeling shows one shore's discharge becomes the other's cleanup, a connection that crosses three state lines.
The microscope and the map
$1.19M of source-attribution findings · the practitioner orgs that could use them
Wayne State's AI library will tell the region where its plastic comes from. This is the layer that carries the answer to the people who act.
A recommendation and its champions
IJC's 2024 microplastics roadmap · Everyone asking for it
The binational designation is already drafted and formally recommended. It's waiting for governments to pick it up.