Calling all volunteers: Cleanup Club returns to Belle Isle Beach on June 20 to remove plastic before peak summer

The Cleanup Club returns to Belle Isle Beach on Saturday, June 20 for a morning of shoreline work alongside the Belle Isle Conservancy. Volunteer hours run from 10 a.m. to noon.

The work matters beyond the aesthetics. Belle Isle Beach sits at the edge of the Detroit River, and plastic that accumulates along the shoreline can wash into the water if it goes unpicked. From there, it travels downstream toward Lake Erie and eventually into the larger Great Lakes system. The Cleanup Club, a Detroit-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting those lakes from plastic pollution, has been documenting this cycle for years. Since its founding, the organization has collected more than 100,000 individual pieces of plastic debris from Great Lakes shorelines.

The Cleanup Club was founded by Hannah Tizedes, an environmental advocate and artist who spent years doing solo beach cleanups before building an organization around the work. It is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit and a member of the Michigan Microplastics Coalition, which works to end microplastic use in the state. Cleanup Club volunteers picked up more than 800 pounds of trash from Midtown Detroit in a single afternoon last year.

The partnership with the Belle Isle Conservancy is a recurring one. The Conservancy, a 501(c)(3) that works to restore and preserve Detroit's island state park, launched the Keep Belle Isle Beautiful anti-litter campaign in 2017 and has made community cleanups a regular part of how it maintains the park since then. Together, the two organizations have run events at the island's beach and canal areas. The June 20 cleanup is a chance to help keep the beach in good shape before the peak of summer, when foot traffic on the island picks up and more debris accumulates near the water.

Belle Isle is one of the few accessible public swimming spots in the city, and the beach draws steady crowds throughout July and August. Keeping it clean is a practical matter as much as an environmental one.

The cleanup is open to all. Participants are welcome to bring reusable gloves if they have them.

For full event details and to learn more about ongoing work by The Cleanup Club, visit thecleanupclub.org or follow @the.cleanup.club on Instagram.