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 PT 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 11:59pm 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 (@fitz350). 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.
