Great Lakes United was founded in 1982 on Lake Huron's Mackinac Island. In 1985 the organization established a central office in Buffalo, New York, and hired its first executive director. In 1986 Great Lakes United achieved its first significant impact on Great Lakes environmental consciousness by holding more than a dozen hearings around the Great Lakes to make people aware of the Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and the treaty organization that reports on agreement progress, the International Joint Commission. The hearings were very well attended and reported on, and the next year citizens began attending the IJC's formerly sleepy biennial meetings. By 1995 the IJC biennials were four-day, 2,000-person events of Great Lakes environmental discussion.

Great Lakes United develops and promotes effective policy initiatives, carries out education programs, and promotes citizen action and grassroots leadership to assure:

• Clean water and clean air for all
• Better safeguards to protect the health of people and wildlife
• A conservation ethic that will leave a healthy Great Lakes.

Great Lakes United coordinates its efforts through issue-based task forces:

• "Clean Production,"which advocates pollution prevention and other measures to eliminate the use and release of persistent toxic substances
• "Biodiversity and Habitat Protection," which develops and implements strategies to protect and restore self-sustaining, diverse, native plant and animal communities and intact, interconnected habitat within the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basin
• "Healthy Communities," which works to clean up the most contaminated sites around the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River
• "Sustainable Waters," which advocates policies that support ecologically protective water withdrawal practices, water conservation, and sustainable water use
• "Nuclear-Free Green Energy," which advocates energy conservatoin, clean, sustainable energy production, and phaseout and shutdown of all Great Lakes basin nuclear power plants