If you feel it, say it!

We love the Great Lakes but take them for granted. But imagine if Americans and Canadians around the Great Lakes made their appreciation visible. That's the idea behind the Thanks Great Lakes experiment – to give folks an easy way to show how they feel. The THXGLX sticker is meant to do that. 

To be clear, this isn't a scheme to sell stickers; they're free. The only motive is to amplify pride in the Great Lakes as a means of protecting them.

Ideally, the stickers will catch on with the public, at which point a nonprofit will be organized to run the experiment. The long-term goal is for "Thanks Great Lakes" to become a basin-wide theme as environmental organizations, research institutions, government agencies, chambers of commerce and tourism boards are persuaded to adopt the idea and use it in their marketing and communications.

But that's down the road. For now, the first step is to find out whether businesses are willing to give away the stickers and whether Great Lakes residents want them.

This website was created to give business owners a clear picture of what the experiment involves.

Less than 1% of all water in the world is usable as drinking water, and it’s distributed very unevenly. Fortunately for Great Lakes residents, the oasis in their backyard holds more than 20% of the world’s supply.

That’s a huge share of the planet’s available freshwater, especially when you consider that the 35 million Americans and Canadians who live in the Great Lakes Basin account for only 0.4% of the world’s 8 billion people.

Despite their size, the Great Lakes are fragile. Long-standing problems such as invasive species, legacy contaminants, and algae blooms are now compounded by the dangers of microplastics, forever chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and climate change. Meanwhile, in the background, parched areas of the country are casting covetous eyes toward our water.