MrBeast and his Team Seas initiative helped remove 34 million pounds of trash from our seas. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Jimmy Donaldson, better known by his YouTube handle MrBeast, has been working on something for a few years now. His #TeamSeas campaign began back in October, 2021 with a goal of raising $30 million and removing 30 million pounds of trash from the oceans. They raised the $30 million by January, 2022, then plugged away at the 30 million pounds in the intervening years. Now, a little more than two years later, that goal has been ticked off the list, too. On July 16, MrBeast announced that Team Seas had helped with the removal of 34,080,191 pounds of trash from oceans across the globe.
MrBeast is, to put it mildly, very, very internet famous. As of June, 2024, he has more subscribers on YouTube than anyone else. He’s made a name for himself by giving away enormous sums of money to random people, and he’s gained over 302 million followers because of it. He also co-founded a variety of different philanthropic initiatives, including the one called Team Seas.
MrBeast jumped on the YouTube train in 2012, when he was just 13. At the beginning, was just another young YouTuber. Then, in 2017, he counted to 100,000. Since the internet is the internet, that particularly boring video went viral and his rise to the top began. Now, his videos are wildly extravagant and routinely rack up millions of views. Fast forward to now, and MrBeast is a brand made up of nearly 300 people and acts as an umbrella for other spin off channels like Beast Reacts, MrBeast Gaming, MrBeast 2, and Beast Philanthropy.
Aside from Team Seas, MrBeast founded MrBeast Burger, Feastables, and co-created Team Trees, which has raised $24 million for the Arbor Day Foundation since its inception. Team Seas, which acts as a fundraiser for both the Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup, has raised somewhere in the vicinity of $30 million.
As of today all 34,000,000 pounds of trash from TeamSeas has been removed from the ocean and verified by a third party 😀https://t.co/SbN0HkyVlJ
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) July 16, 2024
“This couldn’t have happened without you guys all coming together one donation at a time,” MrBeast said in a Team Seas video.
This is far from the first time MrBeast has done something good for the environment by utilizing his immense following. Team Seas came after Team Trees, which accomplished a goal of planting 20 million trees back in 2020.
