HOLLAND, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – Students from area high schools including Hudsonville High School’s Green Team spent their Saturday on the shores of Lake Michigan cleaning up Holland State Park.
It’s the Alliance for the Great Lake’s annual Adopt-a-Beach day. In states all around the Great Lakes, thousands of volunteers cleanup beaches around the Great Lakes while collecting valuable data used by researchers. The results are cleaner beaches and data on pollution sources that can be used to develop solutions to pollution problems.
Christine Webster is a science teacher at Hudsonville High and her students have been involved with Adopt-a-Beach for three years. Green Team is an organization that spends every Wednesday recycling bottles and cans and Webster says it’s just an expansion of what they started at the high school into the community. Students walked in groups picking up the littered beach.
“The main things we pick up are cigarette butts, cigar tips and lots and lots of plastic. Balloons, bottle tops, pieces and parts of toys that have been broken. So that’s basically a lot of plastic.”
Other area high schools included Grandville High and West Ottawa. Members of the community lent a helping hand as well. Adopt-a-Beach days were also held at South Haven State Park, Saugatuck State Park and Grand Haven State Park.
