Team Seas: You won't believe what these youtubers did!

So before you start reading this blog I want you just take a minute and look around you, whether you're sitting at your study table, living room sofa, or out in the open in public space. Note how much plastic is around you.

Well for me the list is endless, I have my pen which is plastic, calculator, accessories all plastic. Feel ashamed writing so much about saving the world and recycling plastics but all I find around me is plastic. We've all come to the point where life without plastic even for a day is inevitable. But why is plastic so irreplaceable in our life? Why is it so important to us that we cannot give up.

Some people say its cheap, easily available and of lower production cost. Some points I can think of is its light-weighted, it can also be melted and remolded.

But what about the microplastics and all the tiny bits and pieces of plastic that end up in the bodies of fishes and birds which we end up consuming. What is the justification then? The plastic we use and throw off finally ends up in our stomach. We must realize that the money we snitch to buy it slowly ends up killing us.

The wind currents carry these light-weighted plastic particles and it ends up in an area called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the middle of largest oceans in the world. Now this area in the ocean acts as a clogged drain suffocating the life forms in the water and sea bed corals waiting for us to clean.

Enter ''TEAM SEAS'' an extremely ambitious initiative by Mr. Beast and Mark Rober. And I must say it was a success!

Now I don't think Mr. Beast needs an introduction. He is one the most popular youtubers of today. Expensive stunts and challenges fetch him a lot of following, and he is well known for them.

Mr. Beast

Another famous American youtuber Mark Rober who is also an engineer, and inventor. He is known for his videos on popular science and do-it-yourself (DIY) gadgets, well before YouTube, Rober was an engineer with NASA.

Mark Rober

Now what is Team Seas? Team Seas, is an international collaborative fundraiser as they have succeeded in raising 30 million U.S. dollars, pledging to remove 30,00,00,00 pounds of marine debris from the ocean by the end of 2021.

An attempt to collect 30M pounds of trash! Is that even possible? How long does it take? These were a few of the questions that popped up in my head.

Well they were not alone. They partnered with up with The Ocean cleanup project. Boyan Slat who invented the ocean clean-up machine called the interceptor. When he was just 16 years old, he went for scuba diving in Greece, he saw more plastic than fish. His friend who was with him even mistook the plastics for jellyfishes.

This Ted talk became viral back in 2012 and now this ocean cleanup has became a huge Non-profit organization aiming to completely clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch(GPGP). Well Boyan Slat along with Mr. Beast and Mark Rober teamed up to clean one of the most polluted beaches in the world in the Dominican Republican.

It was not an easy task to manually clean a beach full of plastics, so around 1000 volunteers flew in from different parts of the world to help out along with the residents of Dominican Republic.

The ocean water on the other hand was cleaned up by the interceptor .

How does it work?

1. Anchoring near the bank

2. As trash flows it runs into the barriers at the surface of water.

3. Trash collected goes up the conveyer belt

4. Dropped into floating dumpsters where then it is segregated by the local village communities

Interceptor

Can you believe that this simple 4-step process can make this huge difference?

Well there is more to it. Solar panels and rain-water harvesting systems are all equipped on this machine. Since its solar powered, it continues to collect trash even throughout the night. The local government implements, operates and maintains the interceptor. It is run locally by naval officers.

But have you thought about the fishes, can they swim freely under the interceptor? Well the answer is yes! The barrier below the interceptor for collecting plastics extends upto six and half feet deep only and hence the movements of the fishes are not obstructed in no way.

The trash in the rivers collected increased on that day than usual because it rained. Rains increase the flow of river. The large dumpsters collect the trash that usually take a few days to fill was full in just a few hours on that day!

Another issue faced that is common is the proper disposal of the community waste.

For example some of us live in cities where at the end of the day we throw our waste in bin outside our homes. And the next day we see its gone! All wastes are properly managed. But this is not the case for rural areas like the slums where even if the garbage is disposed in the right place it is not accessible by the garbage truck.

This further draws a wider gap between the urban and rural spaces. For all this the interceptor is not meant to be a permanent fix for the problem however until each and every plastic bag is removed it is the only plausible solution.