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‘This is how you Tahoe:’ BEBOT expands into North Tahoe ahead of July Fourth

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KINGS BEACH, Calif. – It was a relatively colder morning on Monday, June 17, but that didn’t stop beachgoers from setting up chairs and blankets at Kings Beach. The sight of corduroyed sand that the beach cleaning robot, called BEBOT, left behind had some beach visitors pause for a moment before settling into a spot.

ECO-CLEAN Solutions debuted their expansion into North Lake Tahoe at Kings Beach on June 17.

If the track shoed robot and its evidence in the sand didn’t reveal that something was going on, the Keep Tahoe Blue popup tent, coned-off beach sections and those gathered in high visibility vests did.

This was BEBOT’s debut of its North Tahoe expansion with a series of beach cleanings lined up for the remainder of June. The kick off didn’t start small. This Kings Beach cleaning was the most square footage BEBOT has covered to date and most litter collected in one cleanup.

There were many firsts at the event. It was the inaugural cleaning for the Desert Research Institute and team of University of Nevada, Reno and Truckee Meadows Community College students tasked with developing a new standardized data collection method. The data from it can help make policy decisions and answer questions.

“Are we seeing different sorts of trash in different areas and why might that be?,” DRI Scientist Dan Saftner explained.

The Desert Research Institute and team of students sort items collected from BEBOT at its North Tahoe debut on June 17.

Those behind the machines at ECO-CLEAN Solutions say in addition to physically sifting the beaches, collecting trash and data, their BEBOTs are also an engagement tool.

“We find that anytime we have the BEBOTs operating out on the beach,” ECO-CLEAN’s Katy Jo Carringer says, “You see people’s faces light up in excitement.” They ask questions, she explains and finds their efforts spark more than curiosity, “They feel like they want to be a part of it.”

ECO-CLEAN and partners like the League to Save Lake Tahoe, land managers and others are trying to instill a message far and wide ahead of the Fourth of July.

“Our ultimate goal is to embody the message ‘This is how you Tahoe’ by fostering a deep connection to Lake Tahoe for every visitor, inspiring them to leave the beaches better than they found them,” Carringer says.

It’s their hope that by exemplifying the Tahoe lifestyle, come July 5, volunteers will have nothing to clean up.

Within the coned-off beach section, a handful of volunteers employed different tactics to clean the beach. Some combed through sand with their fingers and others dragged their feet to keep track of where they’ve cleaned. “They know they’re up against a robot,” The League to Save Lake Tahoe’s Jesse Patterson said, watching the volunteers during the human versus machine test.

Volunteer in the test, Vinton Hawkins, was inspired to help out, thinking back to his rugby days and the tradition of sweeping the sheds in which the top players would clean the locker room to show the younger players how they take care of the their own team. “It’s essentially,” he explains, “nobody’s too big to come out and do the right thing—yeah—sweep the sheds.”

Although he and other volunteers were participating in the human versus machine test, it ultimately demonstrates how people and technology can work together, ECO-CLEAN Solutions says.

Another volunteer in the test, Terri Wolf, watched her competitor, the BEBOT, unload its catch from the area she had just cleaned. “It’s a good partnership,” she said.

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The solar powered machines, which got started in Tahoe just two years ago cleaning beaches mostly along the south shore, is expanding into North Tahoe public beaches thanks largely to tourist dollars.

“Tourism dollars basically come in and then we send them out into the community,” Kirstin Guinn, Marketing Director for North Tahoe Community Alliance (NTCA) explains.

Tahoe-Placer transient occupancy tax (TOT) from overnight visitors and a receipt line item from activity, restaurants, and retailer purchases, know as Tourism Business Improvement District dollars (TBID), fund this northern expansion through NTCA’s Dollars at Work program.

Although TOT has been around for a long time, the TBID funds are a new, as of 2021, self assessed funding source that goes towards benefits for the paying businesses.

“We’re just happy to see tourism dollars be put right back into the community in a way that directly benefits all of our residents, all of our businesses and all of our visitors as well,” Guinn expresses.

And most importantly, she says, it benefits the lake.

“The lake doesn’t care if you’re a visitor or a resident or whoever you are,” Guinn adds. The focus is human impact mitigation, and says humans have in impact whether they are in Tahoe for a day or a lifetime. “It’s not important how long you’ve been here. What’s important is your impact is not negative on the lake.”

For all those visiting the beach that day and nestling into the freshly swept beach, Jesse Patterson with the League to Save Lake Tahoe said, “I would hope that they would see how much care we put into protecting the beach, and” he said, “how clean and beautiful it is.” The Chief Strategy Officer added, “And then they’re inspired to keep it that way, right?”

Patterson explained the team will follow this cleaning with a cleaning in the fall. This provides information on how much trash accumulates over years as well as the amount over a summer.

He says, “One piece of trash on the beach is too much trash.”

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