Nice work, love the animation! As others have mentioned, something to make the stakes a little higher would have been good. Related, a diver I know surfaced to realize the anchor broke and his boat was drifting away, and faster than he could swim in his gear! So he pulled off his gear and attached it to a buoy hoping he could a) swim fast enough to catch up to his boat and b) that the buoy would actually float with most of his gear attached. Thankfully it all worked out, if I could feel that tension here, it would be quite the experience.
Another way you could go is rating how much trash you collect and showing the proportionally decayed planet as a result.