YouTuber slammed over 'terrible' experiment: 'Talk about pollution and waste'
A YouTuber is facing backlash online for his recent video, during which he wasted thousands paper towel rolls while testing whether he could soak up all of the water in a pool.
Tyler Oliveira, who has more than 589,000 subscribers on YouTube, uploaded the experiment on Jan. 10 titled, "Can 1,000,000 Paper Towels Absorb A Swimming Pool?" On that same day, he pinned a response to the criticism he was receiving in the comments section of his video.
"These paper towels existed independently of whether or not I would have used them," Oliveira wrote. "These paper towels existed and would have been used at some point in the foreseeable future. But yes, perhaps, I had a micro impact on the demand of paper towels throughout the entire paper towel industry. Who knows."
He also made a vaguely unrelated point about how the "house you live in as you watch this video, is, largely, made of wood. Trees, in fact."
According to the beginning of the video, Oliveira was inspired after a TikTok video in which he attempted to "clean up" a glass of water he "spilled" in the pool went viral. He then began to wonder how much it would take to soak up all of the water in his pool — a question he said his TikTok "sparked across the nation" — and promptly ordered 100,000 paper towel rolls to his house.
life if you hate when this happens 😭 #fyp#foryou#foryoupage
The video consists of Oliveira tossing full paper towel rolls into his pool and now has over 188,000 views. After failing to absorb gallons of pool water, Oliveira concludes the video by piling all of the soaked paper towels into a garbage bin, which he then tries to blow up.
The majority of commenters were unimpressed with Oliveira's stunt.
"Talk about pollution and waste," posted one commenter.
"The amount of paper towels that was wasted is terrible," said another.
A 2011 study published by The Guardian found that paper towels were the least environmentally-friendly way to dry hands and clean items. Paper towels were found to generate 70 percent more carbon emissions than hand-dryers.
