04 What was the composition of the pollution collected during the spring Shoreline Cleanup?

Every spring, we collect garbage floating in the back bays. TrentU began measuring the collection in 2025. They found that 50% of the pollution is accidental: toys drift away from shore, a beach towel is forgotten, and an empty water bottle flies overboard. It is not reasonable to ban bottles and toys on the lake. Given human nature, we may never reduce this pollution.

However, the other 50% is polystyrene foam, which comes only from docks. That pollution is controllable and would be eliminated immediately if the 44 remaining property owners (7% of our 620 properties) upgraded their old foam docks. That’s only a fraction of the number of foam docks we had years ago, so this is a very achievable goal!