WHAT IS #TEAMSEAS?
#TeamSeas is
a global campaign to raise $30M to remove 30M pounds of plastic
and trash from our ocean, rivers and beaches. It’s also the
second wave of the largest creator-led fundraising campaign to
ever hit the internet:
#TeamTrees.
We launched
#TeamTrees
in 2019 with a goal of raising $20M to plant 20M trees and we
smashed it—raising over $23M and generating more than 1B video
views. Even two years later, TeamTrees.org is still receiving
donations and planting 2,600 trees every day. We’re back again
to rally the internet’s passion and imagination in support of
the ocean.
WHAT IS THE TIMING OF THE CAMPAIGN?
We launched #TeamSeas on
Friday, October 29th at 1PM PACIFIC TIME with a
massive wave of online videos
and we’ll continue to create content to rally our communities
throughout the campaign. (If you’re reading this right now, and
you love the ocean, we invite you to create something too). The
$30M fundraising goal officially ends on January 1, 2022 at
midnight PT, so we only have a short amount of time to raise the
money. The funded cleanup work will begin in 2022 and is
scheduled to conclude in three years. We’ll keep the site up and
running the whole time (and you can still plant a tree at
TeamTrees.org!).
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE MONEY?
Every single dollar #TeamSeas raises toward the $30M
will go to independently verified pounds of trash that have been
removed from beaches, rivers or the ocean. When you donate, the
funds go directly to the two not-for-profit organizations, Ocean
Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup. They split the funds 50/50
and the money will be released when the trash is removed and
verified: $1, one pound. Each non-profit is responsible for
delivering on their half of the goal.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE TRASH?
Great question! Wherever and whenever possible, items like cans,
glass, and plastic beverage bottles will be separated and
recycled. In cases where contamination of the trash and/or lack
of local recycling makes it impossible to reprocess, trash will
go to a proper disposal site in accordance with local
regulations and capacity. That’s why we need to reduce the
amount of plastic we use and waste we generate, period.
WHO IS BEHIND #TEAMSEAS?
Just like the original campaign that inspired it, #TeamSeas is
being led by
Mark
(Rober), Jimmy (MrBeast) and Campaign Director, Matt Fitzgerald (). We’ve reunited many of the world’s most popular content
creators to help launch the campaign, add their creativity and
invite their audience to power #TeamSeas toward its ambitious
30M goal. At the end of the day, we hope to create a platform
that you—anyone reading this—can genuinely claim as your own.
Think of it as a giant, global potluck for good. What would you
like to bring to the party?
WHICH NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS ARE YOU PARTNERING WITH?
For #TeamSeas, we’ve partnered up with
Ocean Conservancy
and
The Ocean Cleanup. All donations to #TeamSeas will be split between the two
organizations, 50/50.
Ocean Conservancy
is #TeamSeas’s implementation partner for beaches and oceans.
Ocean Conservancy champions science-based solutions to tackle
the largest ocean conservation challenges we face to strengthen
the health of the ocean today and for the future. They mobilize
citizen advocates to facilitate change, and are committed to
supporting efforts that benefit the people who depend on the
ocean for food, jobs and recreation. Ocean Conservancy
facilitates the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC), one of the
world’s largest volunteer cleanup efforts for the ocean. Ocean
Conservancy is a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 23-7245152)
and is rated 4 stars (94/100) by Charity Navigator.
The Ocean Cleanup
is #TeamSeas’s implementation partner for rivers. The
Ocean Cleanup
develops and scales technologies to clean up what is already
polluting our oceans and to intercept plastic on its way to the
ocean via rivers. Their goal is to achieve a 90% reduction of
floating ocean plastic by 2040. Founded in 2013, The Ocean
Cleanup has a proven commitment to the ambitious goal of ridding
the world’s oceans of plastic. With their river systems, the
Interceptors, they are now helping to close the tap on a global
scale, capturing plastic before it enters the oceans via rivers.
The Ocean Cleanup is a registered ANBI Foundation in the
Netherlands, and their U.S. affiliate, The Ocean Cleanup North
Pacific Foundation, is also a
Gold-rated
US 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 81-5132355).
WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH PLASTIC POLLUTION IN OUR WATER?
The ocean and the life within it are incredibly important. Aside
from the water we drink, the ocean produces half the air we
breathe every day. So it’s a no-brainer that keeping it clean
and healthy is critical to our survival. Unfortunately our
ocean—and the rivers that feed it—are full of plastic trash.
It’s estimated that there are 200M tons of plastic already
circulating in marine environments, with an estimated 11M tons
entering the ocean EVERY YEAR. Pollution from items like
bottles, bags, straws and abandoned fishing gear is a health
crisis for our entire planet.
HOW ARE WE ACTUALLY GOING TO CLEAN UP ALL THIS TRASH?
We’re glad you asked. Because 30M pounds is A LOT of trash
(roughly equivalent to 85 football fields covered a foot deep).
We’re dividing our work among three points of intervention:
beaches, rivers and oceans.
Beaches
With the experts at Ocean
Conservancy, we’ll send professional crews to clean up some of
the most iconic, vulnerable beaches on the planet. We’ll also be
holding safe, locally-hosted #TeamSeas events leveraging Ocean
Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) network so
#TeamSeas supporters can roll up their sleeves and make an
impact firsthand, one pound of trash at a time. The ICC is the
largest beach cleanup network in the world (more than 350
million pounds of trash have been collected from beaches in its
35+ year history!)
Rivers
For our rivers, #TeamSeas
will fund Interceptors™, The Ocean Cleanup’s river cleanup
technologies that collect trash before it can reach the ocean.
The Ocean Cleanup has several Interceptors already deployed in
some of the world’s most polluted rivers to catch plastic and
trash upstream. #TeamSeas will support the expansion and
continued operation of this work as The Ocean Cleanup takes aim
at the 1% of rivers which contribute 80% of the trash flowing
into the ocean from rivers.
Oceans
Lost, abandoned and
discarded fishing gear – or ghost gear – is some of the
deadliest ocean trash, and is super tricky to recover. #TeamSeas
will work with Ocean Conservancy’s Global Ghost Gear Initiative®
to go to ghost gear “graveyards,” where we’ll identify and float
the abandoned gear to the surface, hook it onto boat cranes and
remove it from the ocean forever.
HOW CAN I HELP?
We want you to do what you do best. Talk to a friend, organize
your school or business, make some art, film a video, whatever
makes sense to you and your community as we work toward 30M. For
#TeamTrees, we saw artists draw comics for trees, kids hold
bakesales, and tech founders one-up each other on the
Leaderboard. Whoever your team is, get them on #TeamSeas. You
can create a Team during checkout or join one from Search.
We recommend you start by telling someone else about the
mission, why you’re passionate about it, and invite them to get
involved at TeamSeas.org. We also encourage you to engage with
and amplify #TeamSeas content across the internet. We think
you’ll be surprised at who else is on #TeamSeas and how many
fascinating videos are out there for you to discover. As the
campaign develops, we hope you’ll co-create it with us as we
rally toward our shared 30M goal. One of the most exciting parts
for us is that we have no idea what you’ll come up with, and we
can’t wait to see it.
WHO SHOULD I TAG OR FOLLOW ON SOCIAL? WHAT’S OFFICIAL?
#TeamSeas official social accounts will always be listed here
and on the homepage. If you’re not sure if it’s legit, check
TeamSeas.org. Here’s the latest list:
Twitter:
twitter.com/teamseas
, Instagram:
instagram.com/teamseas
, Facebook:
facebook.com/teamseas
, YouTube:
youtube.com/teamseas
, reddit:
reddit.com/r/teamseas
, TikTok:
tiktok.com/@teamseas
( use the ‘Support Nonprofit’ donate sticker for Ocean
Conservancy). If you stream on Twitch, check out the TeamSeas
campaign tools on Tiltify to let your viewers donate live and
your community to fundraise together.
Speaking of legit, the only official store for #TeamSeas is
store.teamseas.org. Please watch out for scammers.
Last but not least, we encourage you to engage with other
#TeamSeas supporters to weave together all our crazy internet
worlds in support of the cause. Spread love, mash the RT button,
and if you see a way to organize something cool together, well,
that’s awesome!
IS CLEANUP REALLY THE BEST SOLUTION?
The plastic pollution problem is so big that no single solution
will fix it at once. But we’ve got to start somewhere. 30M
pounds of trash collected is 30M pounds of trash that won’t come
face to face with whales, dolphins, seabirds and other beloved
wildlife, and that won’t keep breaking down into smaller and
smaller pieces, ending up on our dinner plates. There are a lot
of ways you can tackle the problem, and we think cleanups are
complementary so long as they’re not excuses for delay. By
reaching a billion people through #TeamSeas videos, and
activating new generations of ocean advocates, we hope to
inspire a movement and demand for solutions. Plastic and our
oceans don’t mix, and we’re here to do something about it.
WHAT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE?
Plastic production and climate change are inextricably linked,
and both are huge problems for the ocean. Every year, 11 million
metric tons of plastics enter our ocean. Nearly all of these
plastics are made from fossil fuels including crude oil, natural
gas liquids and coal. Ocean Conservancy has estimated that the
crude oil needed to make that much plastic is over 800 times
more than the amount spilled during the Exxon Valdez disaster!
And the greenhouse gas emissions from the plastics sector are
about 2 gigatons, equivalent to the emissions of 370 million
passenger cars. You can learn more about the plastics-climate
connection
here. There’s much more we need to do to tackle the climate crisis,
and we hope you bring this same #TeamSeas energy to other
efforts to protect the ocean and the planet.
