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Popular YouTube creators MrBeast and Mark Rober are back with another hype-tastic, eco-friendly charity collab.
The duo on Friday launched #TeamSeas, a crowdfunding campaign to raise $30 million to remove 30 million pounds of plastic and trash from the world’s oceans, rivers and beaches.
MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) and Rober, both viral-video maestros, are aiming to do well by doing good: Besides supporting a worthy environmental cause, they stand to expand their audience bases and generate a tsunami of video views.
In a video announcing #TeamSeas, MrBeast pitches in to clean up 60,000 pounds of trash from extremely dirty beaches (watch below or at this link). “For every one dollar you guys donate… one pound less of trash will be in the ocean,” he says.
YouTube Originals will match the first $400,000 in donations to #TeamSeas, according to MrBeast.
Previously, MrBeast (above left) and Rober (above right) partnered in 2019 to launch one of the largest creator-led fundraising campaigns, #TeamTrees, in partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation. The initiative’s goal was to raise $20 million to plant 20 million trees, and it ended up bringing in more than $23 million, generating more than 1 billion video views in aggregate. Two years later, teamtrees.org is still receiving enough donations to plant 2,600 trees per day.
For #TeamSeas, the YouTubers selected not-for-profit orgs Ocean Conservancy and the Ocean Cleanup as their partners. Supporters can donate at teamseas.org. Half the money raised will go toward volunteer beach-cleanup programs through Ocean Conservancy; the other half will fund will Ocean Cleanup’s “50-ton trash-eating robot” barges that collect garbage in rivers that flow into oceans, Rober says in his announcement video (below and at this link).
The #TeamSeas organizers have enlisted thousands of content creators in 145 countries — with a more than 1 billion followers combined — to promote the effort. Participants include AzzyLand, DanTDM, TommyInnit, LinusTechTips, TierZoo, LEMMiNO, The Infographics Show, Hannah Stocking, Dhar Mann and Marques Brownlee (aka MKBHD). In addition, #TeamSeas enlisted both BEN and sister company TubeBuddy to promote the initiative via their community of 8 million global creators.
According to an Ocean Conservancy estimate, some 150 million metric tons of plastic already circulate in marine environments. Researchers say as much as 11 million metric tons enter the ocean every year. If the #TeamSeas hits its fundraising goal, the campaign will remove the equivalent of 85 football fields covered one foot deep in plastic debris.
The fundraising campaign is set to run through Jan. 1, 2022, but the YouTubers will keep the site up and provide progress updates over three years of operation to clean the trash.
In addition to making donations through the #TeamSeas website, users can donate on MrBeast’s and Rober’s YouTube videos that are tagged for the campaign and in the TikTok app through a quick-donate sticker (which users can add to their profiles or videos) powered by fundraising platform Tiltify.
MrBeast, who has more than 72 million followers for his YouTube channel, is famous for his big-money giveaways and stunts, while he’s also raised tens of millions of dollars for philanthropic causes. MrBeast is the top nominee for the 2021 YouTube Streamy Awards, picking up seven nods.
Rober (19.9 million YouTube subscribers) is a former engineer at NASA who worked on the Curiosity rover and designer in Apple’s special projects group, whose videos feature stunts and his own inventions.
MrBeast and Rober posted videos to their YouTube accounts today announcing the launch of #TeamSeas: