Bowling Green State University football player Beau Carmon joins Port Clinton Middle School to pick up litter at Port Clinton City Beach, Ohio. Photo credit: Eriesponsible.A Cleveland-area nonprofit is tackling marine debris where state agencies can’t: on beaches, in marinas, and through grassroots advocacy that’s reaching tens of thousands
When Joshua Dykstra and Tony Diebert started sketching ideas in a Westlake garage seven years ago, they had no grand plan to form a nonprofit. They just wanted to do something about the plastic pollution they kept seeing in Lake Erie, the body of water they’d grown up on and loved.
Today, Eriesponsible has pulled thousands of pounds of debris from Lake Erie’s shores, educated tens of thousands of people, and carved out a niche in the Great Lakes conservation ecosystem: being an organization that can guide people on how to help.
“Educational nonprofits and entities can’t advocate. All they can do is educate,” Dykstra said. “That was the gap we decided to fill: be a boots on the ground, zero red tape organization that can go into schools, businesses, marinas, tourist areas, wherever that may be, and say, if you guys don’t change your ways, here’s what’s going on, here are the facts, here’s what you can do to make a difference.”
Where litter meets infrastructure
Although the organization began with surface-level beach cleanups, Dykstra now sees a clear connection between Cleveland’s aging urban infrastructure and lake pollution every time he walks a beach near the city.
The debris tells a story. In rural areas, fishing line and shotgun shells from hunting waterfowl dominate. At urban beaches like Edgewater, the sand is laced with plastic cigar tips, vape pods, and microplastic fragments, especially after heavy rain.
“You can draw a direct line between stormwater runoff and what ends up on the beach,” said Dykstra. “If you look at where the storm runoff is and you look at where the closest beaches are and walk those beaches, that’s some of the worst trash I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The link between precipitation and plastic is undeniable. “You get a major rain, and then the water would come back down a little bit again, and just walking the shoreline of marinas and the coastal areas, it’s night and day from when you have heavy rains as opposed to a dry spell,” Dykstra explained.
He points to Detroit’s multi-billion dollar investment in wastewater infrastructure as a model, but notes that smaller tourism-dependent communities like Sandusky, Vermilion, and his hometown of Port Clinton face a tougher challenge.
“There’s very little tax structure there,” he said. “To try to then say, ‘Hey, we need better wastewater treatment when the roads are all trashed’ — when you need money for something that the population sees every day and you say you’re going to divert that to something that maybe they don’t see with their eyes, that’s tough.”
“Obviously, it takes funding, but this is the water that we drink. This is the fish that we eat,” Dykstra said.
Middle schoolers from Mentor Shore Middle School participate in a cleanup at Headlands Beach, Ohio. Photo credit: Eriesponsible.Measuring impact through awareness (not trash)
Unlike organizations that focus on tonnage removed, Eriesponsible measures impact differently. Success is more about the conversations started than the debris collected.
“We realized through education that if we pull a few thousand pounds a year, that’s nothing compared to the 22 million pounds of marine debris that are introduced into the Great Lakes every year,” said Dykstra. “[But] someone seeing a child picking up trash on the beach has lasting power.”
The organization has grown from reaching hundreds in its first year to tens of thousands today. Their Coast to the Oast cycling fundraiser hosted with Twin Oast Brewing on Catawba Island has grown from roughly 200 participants in 2020 to nearly 550 this year — capped because they can’t handle more.
Despite the organization’s growing popularity, the most important metric is behavioral change. When students return from beach cleanups and tell their parents about storm sewers and garbage can lids, that’s success. When a student volunteer from Put-in-Bay High School goes on to major in marine biology — as one did — that’s success.
Technology in the toolkit
Eriesponsible has experimented with various cleanup technologies, from trash booms to remote-controlled collection boats. The most effective has been the BeBot, a beach-cleaning robot on tank treads that sifts sand up to five inches deep, separating microplastics and debris that manual cleanups miss.
It functions much like a Roomba. It treks the beach, sifts the top layer of sand, pulls out debris, and leaves the clean sand behind, which is great for areas people can’t reach.
“When people do [manual cleanup], you’re cleaning what you can see at the surface,” Dykstra said. “When you want to figure out what’s four inches, five inches below the surface, the BeBot is an awesome device.”
The organization has applied for full control of the unit starting in 2026, which would allow two people to conduct comprehensive beach assessments even when large volunteer groups aren’t available.
They’ve also piloted the PixieDrone, a remotely operated water-surface skimmer that collects floating debris, though its use has proven limited in Lake Erie’s conditions.
After testing it, Dykstra found that the PixieDrone would work better in rivers with a constant flow of water, so they’ve stopped using that device for Lake Erie.
“But [the BeBot], we have found, has been super effective,” he said.
The tradeoffs of staying all-volunteer
Eriesponsible operates entirely on volunteer labor, which has been both a strength and a constraint. The organization has hit what Dykstra calls a growth ceiling: “I don’t know how much more growth we can sustain without getting paid people in place and getting some corporate sponsorships, some major grant money.”
They’ve applied for state and federal grants, with limited success. Now, Eriesponsible is looking to court private sponsors and build new partnerships, especially with local groups like the Cleveland Foundation and similar organizations.
All board members maintain day jobs. Dykstra sells insurance, Diebert and other board members come from large companies like Intel and mortgage brokers. They’re united by a love of the lake, not by marine biology degrees, which is why partnerships with Ohio Sea Grant and NOAA have been essential for scientific guidance.
The organization has stayed financially lean but solvent, never borrowing money. Yet the all-volunteer structure limits capacity. The goal is to be able to say yes when a school 100 miles away requests a presentation, or when 20 volunteers in Erie, PA, want to organize a cleanup on short notice.
That expansion depends on a funding model rooted in transparency.
“When someone buys a shirt or donates $1, we want them to know none of that goes into our pockets,” Dykstra said. “All of that goes right back into the organization. We’re very adamant about that.”
Volunteers clean up Gem Beach on Catawba Island, Ohio. Photo credit: Eriesponsible.Policy without politics
Eriesponsible deliberately stays out of political fights around agricultural runoff and algal blooms — battles that “take a lobbyist to go and say, ‘Hey, you need to change this because here’s what it’s doing to Lake Erie.’” Instead, they focus on achievable behavioral changes.
For example, Westlake’s switch from resident-provided bins to city-issued containers with permanent lids eliminated a major source of windblown debris. “That would be something, if every city could implement that, I think that would be a major change,” Dykstra said.
Eriesponsible also advocates for ending the return of plastic grocery bags: a ban that he said was working until major retailers discovered it was unenforceable.
And finally, the organization would like to see more education about reusable water bottles versus single-use plastics, though he acknowledges “I don’t know what the policy change would be there.” Perhaps a warning label, like on cigarettes, that informs consumers of chemicals that can leach into their drinking water if the plastic bottle is left in the sun.
The documentary and what’s next
The 2023 documentary featuring the organization’s work, Ripples of Plastic, has been screening locally and was recently licensed to Lorain County Metro Parks. The film addresses the health impacts of microplastics and the limits of our current recycling infrastructure, messages Dykstra hopes will resonate with water professionals.
“If [wastewater professionals] can’t figure out a way to stop the flow from going into the lake, then trying to work with people to slow down the amount of trash that’s in that water would be huge,” he said.
Looking ahead, Dykstra wants to move from what he calls “2.0” (partnering with organizations for co-op cleanups) to “3.0” (having the capacity to respond immediately to any opportunity).
Still, he’s clear about the organization’s ultimate role: “We can’t clean the whole lake,” Dykstra said. “But we can make people see it differently.”
Eriesponsible’s next major public event is the Cleveland Boat Show, January 15-18, 2026, at the I-X Center. Learn more at eriesponsible.org.
