Living in Lakewood, we all have seen plastic polluting our city, but what we don’t always see is how big of an impact it has on Lake Erie.

There are 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer in Lake Erie which is second most with only Lake Ontario with more per square kilometer.  We need a solution and that is a 2,000ft long C shaped device with a 10ft net that hangs underneath to collect plastic which is not just at the surface.

It is estimated that 50% of the Pacific Garbage Patch will be cleaned up within the next five years.  The pacific garbage patch is a huge mass of garbage which is over 1.6 million square kilometers.  The huge masses or garbage is estimated to be double to size of Texas and was created by the currents of the Pacific Ocean moving plastic and trash together to form huge masses in the Pacific Ocean

If half the pacific garbage patch could be cleaned up in five years then just imagine how much it could help Lake Erie.  Lakewood needs to consider this device for our lake.   Who knows how long it will take for our lake almost completely clean of plastic.  With the device it could be only a few years.  Or we could just constantly keep it in Lake Erie and not let the plastic and other trash build up.  The possibilities for this new technology is endless.

Doug Doren says “Our lake has major trash and plastic problems but this device could cure our problems for good. We need to take action and get it in Lake Erie as soon as we can”.

Boyan Slat, the inventor of this plastic clean up device has only one model out there right now.  This one model is only trying to clean up the Pacific Garbage Patch.

But Lakewood does not need a device the size of the original, which means that it could cost less for us but still be as effective.  Right now the plan for the pacific garbage patch will cost over 300 million dollars, but there is a lot less plastic in Lake Erie so we would not have to spend as nearly as much.