With Thanksgiving coming up, the holiday season is right around the corner! And two vloggers are honoring this time of year with a noble present to Planet Earth. Goodwill is about giving. But this present is about taking—taking 30 million pounds of trash from the world’s oceans by the end of 2021.
Enter #TeamSeas, an internet initiative started by YouTubers Mark Rober (20.3M subscribers) and Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast (75.2M subscribers) this past October. This comes as a follow-up to #TeamTrees, which planted 23 million trees in the span of about two-and-a-half months since being started in October 2019. In a similar fashion to the $1-per-tree model used by #TeamTrees, #TeamSeas removes one pound of plastic waste in the ocean for every dollar donated. Youth and social media content creators everywhere are in on the effort.
#TeamSeas’s story starts not with Rober and Donaldson, but with Dutch inventor Boyan Slat. Ten years ago, Slat realized that the majority of the ocean’s plastic waste is funneled in through rivers. But only 1% of rivers are responsible for 80% of river-borne plastic flowing into the ocean. So if trash could be contained at their source at a few major rivers, then the amount of trash that ends up in the ocean could be significantly reduced. Slat developed a working prototype based on the idea of trapping plastic waste at rivers’ mouths with a long barrier, then “eating” up the trash where it accumulates together. Dubbed the “Interceptor,” Slav’s robot is a water-borne conveyor belt that sweeps up floating plastic waste that piles up next to barriers near the mouths of rivers, then funnels the trash into floating trash bins that are then buoyed to land and emptied at proper waste disposal sites. What’s more, the robot is totally off the grid: it’s equipped with solar panels, AI-operated technology, and a rainwater collection system. Slav’s nonprofit company, The Ocean Cleanup, works with local governments and communities to operate these robots along contaminated rivers. The Interceptor is able to address one of the most prominent root causes of waste buildup in oceans by intercepting trash inflows at their points of origin.
In October, Mark Rober, manning the Interceptor, and Jimmy Donaldson, leading a team of volunteers, competed in a challenge to see who could collect the most plastic waste in the Dominican Republic. This contest was recorded on Rober’s YouTube channel and garnered more than 20 million views. In the same spirit as the “Man versus Machine” nature of their challenge, Rober and Donaldson are donating half the money raised by #TeamSeas to The Ocean Cleanup, which would use the funds to build more Interceptors, and the other half to Ocean Conservancy, an environmental organization which would use the money to hire workers and divers to clear out plastic “ghost fishing gear” from the ocean’s depths and sweep up trash from contaminated coastlines. #TeamSeas’s goal is to have these two organizations use the 30 million raised to clear the promised 30 million pounds of trash.
But how big of a dent in the ocean’s massive waste problem can clearing 30 million pounds of trash really make? Some estimates place the amount of trash that leaks into oceans each year at 18 billion pounds—60 times the amount #TeamSeas seeks to clear. #TeamSeas could clear some plastic and reduce the degeneration of waste into toxic microplastics, but only marginally so. So where does the impact of #TeamSeas lie? In his video, Rober tells us about the most vicious underlying cause of plastic waste buildup: a lack of proper waste disposal infrastructure in rural areas. Where waste disposal is underdeveloped, residents have no choice but to dispose of their trash right outside their households in the open air. Consequently, the elements carry the trash to nearby canals, which all feed into local bodies of water. These bodies of water then empty into major rivers, and they spill out their plastic contents to the ocean. Using robots and volunteers in isolated clean-up events is a temporary solution.
However, partnering with local communities to create better waste management systems, while doing as much as possible to undo the damage done by unmanaged waste, promotes long-term environmental healing. That is precisely what Rober and Donaldson seek to do. By equipping the Dominican Republic’s navy with The Ocean Cleanup’s Interceptors and working with local authorities to build waste disposal infrastructure for rural communities, they hope to break down structural barriers to nurture a future that is better for the world as a whole.
Furthermore, the amount of support that #TeamSeas has received is hardly insignificant. Today, halfway into #TeamSeas’s fundraising window, Rober and Donaldson have already collected over $16 million from the Internet’s donors. The fact that so many young people are willing to actively rally behind a cause that works towards sustainable goals means that Earth has people who are truly willing to protect it, not merely exercising performative activism. As Mark Rober emphasizes, “[#TeamSeas] sends a strong message that young people are hungry and willing to go beyond just retweets to raise awareness. We can be a catalyst for positive change in this world.”
And if you’re hungry to raise awareness and create change, consider starting by making a donation to TeamSeas.org. Look out for local initiatives seeking to promote #TeamSeas, and spread their efforts. This holiday season, pass along the spirit of goodwill by giving to the world’s oceans. Not your plastic waste, though. You can keep that.
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