MrBeast and Mark Rober are not unfamiliar names to the internet, with MrBeast having over 73 million subscribers and Rober having 20.2 million. MrBeast is famous for giving away immense amounts of money for his popular challenge videos, while Mark Rober is a former NASA and Apple engineer and known for his popular science videos. The two have partnered up to raise $30 million, which will remove 30 million pounds of trash from the ocean. According to #TeamSeas, The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit that intercepts trash flowing from rivers to the ocean with their machines called the Interceptors, while Ocean Conservancy focuses mainly on beach cleanups. Half the money will go to the Ocean Cleanup, and the other half will go to Ocean Conservancy.

In many countries, unlike the U.S., people don’t have the luxury of garbage cans right in front of their houses. One of these countries is the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is not necessarily poor in its urban areas, but the rural areas are a different story. ReasearchOMatic says poverty rates are three times higher in rural areas than urban areas in the Caribbean nation. This causes people in rural areas to have nowhere to put their trash, so they end up throwing it into rivers. The problem the Interceptor is trying to solve is finding the worst offending rivers and stopping the trash from making it to the ocean. The Interceptor is a barrier and conveyor belt system that extracts trash from the river.

#TeamSeas is not the only charity-related thing Mark Rober and MrBeast have done together. They have experience in 2019 when they made #TeamTrees. #TeamTrees was a project they started on Oct. 25, 2019. They raised $20 million before 2020 started, in which one dollar was one tree planted. Because of their past success, it would be no surprise if they do well again, as they have already raised over $14 million in just 11 days. You can donate here at #TeamSeas.

#TeamSeas will make a difference by taking trash out of the oceans, but the bigger picture is trying to stop the plastic from getting there. Every year, people put about eight million metric tons of trash into the ocean. You can help less trash end up in the oceans by reducing the amount of plastic you buy, reusing more often, and recycling more consistently.