Thanks to MagellanTV for sponsoring today’s video. There’s a trashteroid on course to
hit Earth’s oceans. Governments are highly alarmed, and are spending billions to prevent
this catastrophe from happening. Astronauts are due to be sent on a daring mission to
divert it off its course or blow it up into little pieces. If successful, they will come
back heroes, having saved not only our oceans but human life from the devastation of the
trashteroid. OK, I’m making up this scenario, but in this video, I want to help you understand
how much of a problem the trash in our oceans is, by using space related comparisons that
are relevant to me, and hopefully you too. So, how much trash do you think is in our
seas? You probably think there is a lot, but you may not have anything to compare it to.
In fact, if I were to tell you there is currently 150 million tons of trash in the sea right
now, with the figure expected to reach 600 million by 2040, those numbers would likely
not mean much to you. So, let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s put those 600
million tons of trash into space and compress it into a ball shape with the approximate
density of an asteroid. How big do you think this trashteroid will be? NASA recently visited
an asteroid near us called Bennu, which was about 500 meters across. It weighs around
70,000,000 tons. That kind of weight was enough for the probe OSIRIS-REx to go in orbit around
it. Our trash asteroid is 600,000,000 tons, almost ten times that. The diameter of the
trashteroid would be easily over a kilometre in diameter. But in reality, trash is a lot
less dense than an asteroid. Bennu, a pretty porous asteroid, still has a density of 1.2
g/cm³. Trash, on the other hand, is probably more like 0.14g/cm³. That would double the
diameter of our trashteroid again. Just imagine, humanity is on course to have collectively
littered the equivalent of an asteroid over 2 km in diameter… not total trash mind you,
just the stuff that will make its way into our oceans. An asteroid this big would be
enough to do some real damage were it to hit us. Just to give some perspective, the impact
would be around 20,000 megatons, a million times more powerful than the Hiroshima atom
bomb. This would wipe out an entire small country, and have global consequences like
dust in the atmosphere. Such an event would be noticeable the world over. However, this
trash is indeed hitting us in other, less conspicuous ways. The health of the oceans
is in a bad state. Marine life is suffering, and microplastics are making their way through
the food chain and onto our plates, slowly poisoning all of humanity. Unfortunately,
there’s no dramatic fix like sending astronauts into space to blow it up. That’s why hundreds
of YouTube creators are coming together to raise awareness and direct people to TeamSeas.org.
Teams Seas is trying to remove 30,000,000 pounds of trash from the oceans, but they
need your help to raise $30,000,000. 100% of every donation Team Seas raises will go
to the non-profit partners “The Ocean Conversancy” and “The Ocean Cleanup”, where $1 will
remove one pound of trash from the ocean. Now, if you are like me and think to yourself
that this really is a drop in the ocean compared to the size of the trashteroid, will this
actually help? After thinking about it I realised that by participating in something like this,
even if only to raise awareness and put pressure on governments to take the issue more seriously,
is still, in my opinion, a worthwhile cause, because with any luck, this will snowball
into something much bigger. And even if it seems hopeless now, we have to start somewhere.
Because who will want to swim in the ocean when there’s only going to be more and more
trash washing up on the beaches? Who wants to eat food with microplastics in them? And
most importantly, I’m sure we want to breathe for generations to come, but that might be
tricky if the phytoplankton that provides a huge amount of the oxygen worldwide dies
off. In fact, at this rate, by 2050, we’ll have more trash weight in the sea than we
do fish. Let that sink in. If you don’t believe me, for this video I’ve also partnered
with MagellanTV, who have a fascinating documentary called “Plastic: The Real Sea Monster”,
which is all about the plastic in the ocean, and it goes into detail about the effects
it has on the ocean’s health. So, if this is something you’d like to learn more about,
and truly inform yourself of the issues at hand, you can use my link in the description
to get MagellanTV free for a whole month so you can watch this documentary for yourself,
and you’ll also find the Team Seas website below too if donating is something you’d
be interested in. I hope you’ll all give this some consideration. All the best, and
see you next time.