From the YouTuber team that brought #TeamTrees to the world - MrBeast and Mark Rober - there's now a new initiative: Team Seas.
This dynamic duo has been fighting to make the world a cleaner and more eco-friendly place since 2019 and has now started another project that's already gaining global recognition. With their first worldwide tree-planting project being such a success as 20 million trees were planted in total, this maritime project is already shaping up to have similar - if not even more - success as the first. The initiative has the potential to pull hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash out of the world's waterways, and the question on everyone's mind is this: How?
How #TeamSeas Is Fighting Polluted Oceans, Rivers, And Beaches
According to the timeline mapped out by Team Seas, the project begins with a super waste-eating robot of sorts. This robot was built by Dutch inventor Boyan Slat and has been appropriately named Interceptor. With Mark Rober being a former NASA engineer and MrBeast bringing light to the issue as only a vlogger could, the project began as a competition on a beach in the Dominican Republic.
While MrBeast led a team who corralled any waste they could find, Rober manned the Interceptor. By the end, the team on the beach led the competition after picking up more trash by hand than the Interceptor, who was stationed at the water's edge. Despite this, the project has gained monumental support and recognition and is now on its way to clearing 30 million pounds of trash by January 1st, 2022.
While picking up waste by hand or with a tool is self-explanatory, how does the Interceptor work? This, in essence, is fairly simple. Once the robot is anchored to a point on the shore, the trash that's floating down a river or around the shoreline is caught via a barrier that extends from the base of the robot. This barrier allows maritime animals to freely swim through and under but catches anything that's floating at the very top of the water before loading it onto a conveyor belt. Anything caught on the conveyor belt is then loaded into one of four floating trash containers before being recycled or disposed of properly.
How It Works In Rivers
This is where the ever-famous Interceptor comes into play and it's just as exciting of a process as cleaning the beaches and oceans. Since rivers are such a massive source of plastic pollution, according to Team Seas, the Interceptor is the perfect robot for the job. Roughly 1% of river pollution accounts for a total of almost 80% of all pollution flowing from rivers, and Interceptor robots have already removed two million pounds of waste from the world's riverways.
- Interceptors are solar-powered and require no electric source whatsoever
- They're off the grid, making them eco-friendly
- While not a permanent solution, they have the potential to make a significant dent in the world's river pollution
At the time of writing, Team Seas has already removed 13,868,147 pounds of waste from the earth's waterways. With a month and a half to go, there are a number of ways in which the rest of the world can help out.
How It Works On Beaches
Since this initiative is an international collaborative fundraiser, the outpouring of support has allowed Team Seas to connect with their goal of hiring teams worldwide to clean up beaches. These professional crews work on collecting trash and debris from shorelines that need it the most, as deemed by its International Coastal Cleanup partners.
From that point, volunteers are encouraged to sign up with Team Seas to jump in the fight for cleaner beaches, even furthering the reach of this initiative. When all waste has been collected, Team Seas works with local authorities in order to properly dispose of it, whether it's through recycling or proper waste removal.
How It Works In The Ocean
One of the biggest threats, according to Team Seas, to our oceans is discarded fishing gear, also known as 'ghost gear.' This waste also happens to be some of the most challenging in regard to recovery while posing the biggest risk to marine life and marine environments. In this case, Team Seas has partnered with the Ocean Conservancy's Global Ghost Gear Initiative, which has had a few years' head start on the process.
While their experts dive deep to find ghost gear and grapple or float it to the surface, Team Seas will be helping to sort out anything that's able to be recycled versus things requiring proper disposal that does not include dumping it into the ocean.
- Donations: One dollar = one pound of waste removed
- Word of Mouth: Sharing the initiative YouTube videos, TikToks, or website on social media is a great way to encourage participation
- Volunteering: Those wanting to get involved with #TeamSeas can organize their own groups or teams, and signup can be done through the Team Seas website at 'Checkout.' Those interested can also join an existing team by using the 'Search' tool.