Want to clean up the oceans? So does Pornhub

Plastic pollution in the oceans has a lot of people calling for action: celebrity activists, environmental foundations, school kids cleaning up beaches and now, Pornhub.

The web’s biggest adult video site has a charitable arm called Pornhub Cares, and it is screening a sex scene on a beach covered in plastic bottles and bags and other trash. While the couple perform, workers in hazmat suits clean up around them.

For each full view of the video, Pornhub Cares will donate money to Ocean Polymers, a UK-based start-up that’s developing a system to collect plastic waste before it gets into the ocean and turn it into fuel.

So is the campaign the company is calling the “Dirtiest Porn Ever” a win-win for Pornhub, Ocean Polymers and the oceans? Or a problematic alliance with “a platform that showcases the exploitation of women and men?”

DnA talks with Heather Wigglesworth, an executive director at Ocean Polymers, about the strange bedfellow partnership.

“‘Team up with adult entertainment company’ wasn't on the top of my to-do list, you know, but desperate times call for desperate measures,” said Wigglesworth (yes, her real name). She says their Instagram followers skyrocketed from “something crazy like 400 people to like 6,000 in 48 hours. Ultimately it's marketing, isn't it.”

Wigglesworth says the funds are being put into the company’s research and development.

“Good on Pornhub for using their reach -- which is a hundred million viewers a day -- for positive. I think more companies should have a corporate social responsibility policy like that.”