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Team Trees and how it’s uniting the internet
How YouTubers, CEOs and companies alike are banding together to tackle climate changeLed by YouTuber ‘Mr Beast’ (real name: Jimmy Donaldson), Team Trees is an environmental campaign that aims to plant 20 million trees by the January 1st 2020 as a way to celebrate Mr Beast’s milestone of 20 million YouTube subscribers. What started as a Reddit meme has now turned into a worldwide movement to raise awareness of the ongoing problem that is deforestation.
Partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation, the largest tree-planting non-profit organization in the world, Team Trees promises to plant one tree for each dollar donated and, according to the Team Trees website, trees will be planted “in forests of high need around the globe” and all donations will go directly towards funding the Arbor Day Foundation’s tree-planting.
While this may not ‘solve climate change’ (as many excited fans and internet users have claimed) it is a good way to bring attention to the issue of climate change and how the average person can make their own lives greener. Donaldson has also agreed to this statement in a recent tweet, saying: “Just to be clear we all realize 20 million trees won’t fix climate change. But at the end of the day, 20 million is better than 0! We want to take action because doing nothing is how we got here!”
Over $10 million has already been donated – half of the set goal. With Mr Beast already being a popular content creator on YouTube, the campaign was immediately extremely successful and flourished with over $3 million donated in under a day. Many famous faces have donated to the cause with many others being urged to by their fans. Some noteworthy donators are Norwegian DJ Alan Walker, Tobi Lutke (CEO of Shopify), Susan Wojcicki (CEO of YouTube), billionaire Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey (Co-founder and CEO of Twitter and CEO of Square), ELF Development A/S (a real estate company) and several well-known YouTubers (including Pewdiepie, TheOdd1sOut, Ninja and Jessica and Jeffree Star). Tree planting will take place from January 2020 and will be completed before the end of December of the same year. The Arbor Day Foundation aim to plant trees on all continents except Antarctica and will ensure that all trees planted are native and suitable for their environment.
Team Trees is just one of the many organizations devoted to spreading awareness on the issues of climate change and deforestation. It is now up to us to take action, if these prevalent issues are ever to be resolved.
To donate, or learn more about Team Trees, visit their website at teamtrees.org
