Nearly everyone, from famous YouTubers to your local mailman, feels concerned about global warming. After all, it is one of the biggest problems humanity will face in our lifetimes. Recently, one particular content producer, MrBeast, has been making some serious headlines. So, who is this influencer, and how did he get his fans to help him plant over 20 million trees to help fight global warming? Read on to find out!
A Milestone Celebration
MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, is one of the most famous content producers on YouTube. He’s most iconic for trying and documenting strange challenges and feats that no one else would want to accomplish, like spending 24 hours in a bathtub full of slime. However, whatever you think of MrBeat’s content, one thing is for sure: he’s very popular and successful. Thankfully, Donaldson also uses his channel to document charities he thinks are important and, more often than not, donates massive amounts of money to these organizations! Sometimes, he’ll even give massive amounts of money to random people on the street! Their reactions are always incredibly heartwarming and hilarious.
As the MrBeast YouTube channel reached 20 million subscribers, he knew he needed to do something big. Of course, a man of the people, Donaldson reached out to his followers on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, to see what they thought. While there were plenty of funny ideas, one stood out among the rest: try and plant 20 million trees. So, Donaldson agreed!
Team Trees
A few days after taking suggestions from social media, Donaldson unveiled his plan. He, along with fellow hit YouTuber Mark Rober, partnered up with the nonprofit Arbor Day Foundation to raise $20 million, the cost of planting 20 million trees. In a promotional video posted to his YouTube channel, MrBeast laid out the exact timeline of how the money raised would turn into trees planted around the world. The tree planting began in January of 2020 and will continue until December 2022, on every continent except for Antarctica. All the trees will be native to parts where they’ll be planted.
MrBeast donated $100,002 of his own money to kick everything off, and Rober followed suit. Then, within days of the announcement, thousands of fans had already donated. “The #TeamTrees initiative has taken off thanks to the creativity of YouTube creators who are harnessing the power, the influence and the passion of their followers,” Arbor Day Foundation President Dan Lambe said. However, the most significant donors were still yet to come…
20 Million Trees Hit!
While MrBeast and Rober are big YouTube stars, they are far from the biggest. Within just a few weeks of the charity drive starting, massive streaming legends like PewDiePie also donated hundreds of thousands. Soon, the news even reached massive celebrities! Elon Musk donated a million dollars to the TeamTrees campaign, and so to did Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke.
Meanwhile, famous band Dave Matthews Band will donate a portion of their summer tour proceeds to the cause as well. Not that it’s truly needed, as Team Trees actually hit 20 million in donations on Thursday, December 19, 2019! However, the TeamTrees site will continue to take money and use that money to plant more trees with the Arbor Day Foundation. Right now, the number of trees that will be planted in the next two years sits at just over 21 million. Who knows where it will sit in a year?