When you think of superheroes, who immediately comes to your mind, Superman, Batman, the Incredible Hulk? When I think of superheroes two people come to my mind, two unlikely candidates, two YouTubers who just reached their goal of raising $30 million to remove 30 million pounds of trash from beaches, rivers, and oceans: MrBeast and Mark Rober.
MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) is a YouTube extraordinaire, racking up 88.6 million subscribers. He does multiple challenges where ordinary people can win lots of money. He is well known for being one of most caring people throughout YouTube history, even the people who do not win still get some sort of prize. He has his own food pantry as well. He is one of YouTubers with millions of subscribers who do not let it get to their head.
Mark Rober is also a big YouTuber. 21 million subscribers (about the population of New York) to date. Well known for his tech videos and popular science. Rober worked for NASA for nine years. He spent seven of those years working on the Curiosity Rover in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He also worked as an Apple engineer, now he spends his time making videos on YouTube.
MrBeast and Mark Rober teamed for a second time to help remove plastic and ocean debris from oceans, rivers, and beaches. Starting on October 29th of 2021, they had one goal in mind, clear 30 million pounds of trash from the ocean. Towards the end of the year, they were worried they would not meet their goal, but big donations from Austin Russell (American Entrepreneur), Tobias Lütke (CEO of Shopify), would grant their wish of raising $30 million by the New Year. This collab between them does not come as a surprise to some, as they have teamed up before for Team Trees.
Team Trees is also a collab between MrBeast and Mark Rober. They managed to raise $20 million to plant 20 million trees. They started Team Trees on October 25, 2019, with the goal being met in just two months. Team Trees also got huge donations ranging from Elon Musk (Founder of Tesla), Plants vs Zombies (Video game series) and even MrBeast himself, donating $200,002.
Did MrBeast and Mark Rober clean the trash out themselves, same as planting 20 million trees? Well no, they had some help. Ocean Conservancy, The Ocean Cleanup, and The Arbor Day Foundation are helping them. All the money that MrBeast and Mark Rober funded from both Team Seas and Team Trees will go straight to the organizations listed above. Team Trees has already planted 8 million trees of course Team Trees ended right when the Covid-19 pandemic was spreading, causing the goal to not be met yet. Team Trees still wants to complete their goal of planting 20 million trees by the end of 2022.
On the other side of spectrum, Team Seas has already removed 13,868,147 pounds of trash from the world’s oceans, rivers, and beaches. Team Seas still has a long way to go before they reach their goal of 30 million pounds removed. Of course, the Covid-19 pandemic is still something they must overcome, and with the new Omicron variant raging around the world. It’s unsure of how quickly Team Seas wants to reach their goal, but I know they will reach it in time.
There is of course speculation around how much Team Seas is helping the ocean and its growing trash problem. While 30 million pounds might not sound like enough trash to make an impact, let me tell you why it’s still helping the ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 1.6 square kilometers or about two times the size of Texas. Plastic can cover the ocean surface and block out light levels making oxygen almost impossible for marine life to get. The most famous reason is that marine life commonly mistakes trash for food, for example a sea turtle may mistake a plastic bag for a jelly fish.This motivation from MrBeast and Mark Rober might motivate people to help clean trash out of the ocean, rivers and beaches and save the ocean and marine life. The legitimacy of both Team Seas and Team Trees has been challenged but both have been proven to be true.
MrBeast is still young, and I have a feeling that he has more collaborations with Mark Rober in the future. His popularity is what makes this truly special. He isn’t like other celebrities that just do good things to make their reputation seem good, he does good things because seeing other people happy makes him happy. He genuinely wants to be a good person.
MrBeast and Mark Rober still have to fulfill their goal of removing 30 million pounds of trash as well as planting 20 million trees. They are trying their best to make the world a little bit of a better place. I believe in them though; they still have a lot left to do and look forward to. MrBeast and Mark Rober are my superheroes.