YouTuber and philanthropist Jimmy “Mr Beast” Donaldson reached his goal of planting 20 million trees on December 19 — but his viral environmental initiative is far from over.
After smashing his goal at the beginning of the month, the YouTuber returned on December 28 for an extra announcement regarding his massive undertaking.
Rather than taking the credit for reaching such a prestigious goal, Mr Beast thanked every person who donated to the cause, claiming that Team Trees had grown far beyond his own brand.
“I want to on the record say that I know I’ll get most of the credit for Team Trees, but I really shouldn’t,” he began. “This all started when I hit 20 million subscribers. As a joke, we were like, ‘Let’s plant 20 million trees!’ Team Trees may have started with me, but it definitely outgrew me.”
The YouTuber even revealed that over 500,000 unique donators had contributed to the cause — people who he asked viewers to thank for their efforts in meeting the Team Trees goal.
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That’s not all: it looks like there’s more in store for Team Trees than was originally intended, with Mr Beast hinting at a yearly recurrence of the charitable project in the spirit of forest preservation.
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“Yeah, Team Trees does end soon, but I’d love to make this a yearly thing,” he continued. “There are a lot of problems in this world, and if once a year, we can get the entire internet together to try to make a change, then I think that’s amazing, and I think it’s worth doing.”
Thus far, Mr Beast’s Team Trees challenge has managed to plant 20,820,194 trees — enough to encircle the entire planet.
Receiving help from the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and even Shopify’s Tobias Lütke, Mr Beast was able to crush his goal before 2020 arrived — a goal that started out as a mere joke, which has since expanded to become one of the most widespread positive changes in internet history.