With Ecosia search engine, using the internet is an eco-friendly activity. It has turned online research into a way to help the planet. How? Every time someone clicks on an advertisement located next to search results, Ecosia makes a few cents, as all search engines do. The difference is that 80% of that earning gets donated to tree-planting projects around the world. To date, the sum of their donations evens out to $3.1 million over the last seven years.
This means that internet users around the world are planting trees just by browsing the internet. It takes about 45 searches to plant a tree and nearly 65 million of them have been planted to date. There are currently 20 tree-planting projects in 15 countries being funded by the searches from Ecosia’s 8 million users. Examples of projects include: planting mangrove trees along the coast in Madagascar, fruit and nut trees in northern Ghana, and native acacia trees near the Golbo Kubis valley in Ethiopia.
Most Ecosia users come from France, Germany, and the UK, but the search engine is rapidly expanding in the United States. Student-led movements on university campuses have become popular in America. For example, at Ohio State University, students have been working to make Ecosia the university’s official search engine because they want to contribute to fighting climate change when doing research.
Ecosia founder and CEO, Christian Kroll, said:
We’re seeing real growth in the US as people find out they can plant trees while they search the internet, which means we are on track to plant more than 100 million trees by early next year.
Kroll started the Berlin-based search engine in 2009. The idea came to him after he was inspired by a couple of trips. After getting his degree in business administration in southern Germany he went to Nepal, then to Argentina where he learned about deforestation.
Kroll said in an email to ThinkProgress:
I knew I wanted to work on a product that would benefit the user as well as society and the environment. So I started traveling the world for inspiration and taught myself some programming.
Ecosia partners with Belgian tree-planting nonprofit WeForest, who first began planting trees in Brazil. It’s since moved on to Burkina Faso where they are participating in the massive reforestation effort known as the Great Green Wall. The mission there is to plant a wall of trees and vegetation across Africa, from Senegal to Djibouti, in an effort to stop the climate change-aided southward spread of the Sahara desert. This project is so important because trees and other vegetation can help reduce erosion and slow wind speeds, and can also be a source of fruit and vegetables for people who live near the wall.
Kroll said:
Those trees nourish local communities. They have the power to neutralize CO2, but also to restart water cycles, feed entire villages and stabilize their political, health, economic and social situations.
Tree planting has been scientifically proven to be a way to combat climate change. Trees act as carbon sinks, sequestering greenhouse gases that otherwise would contribute to global warming. So far, Ecosia has planted more than 3 million trees in Burkino Faso and Brazil by funding a new tree every 12 seconds. The 11-person Ecosia team hopes to plant 1 billion trees by 2020. Kroll admits the target is “very ambitious” but it helps to keep the team inspired nevertheless. “We have a very dedicated community, who love the idea of our tree-planting search so much that they’re usually happy to pass the word on. This has been very motivating for us to see,” he said.
Ecosia employs a chief tree-planting officer, who reviews projects and regularly visits tree-planting sites to make sure that the trees actually stay in the ground. The company also uses satellite imaging to monitor all the millions of trees it funds.
In June 2019, the search engine had its best month to date, investing half a million Euros in tree-planting projects thanks to participants in over 180 countries. Because of them, Ecosia is now funding one tree every 0.8 seconds!
Now you may be wondering, what about the carbon footprint from the company’s data centers? That’s more than covered. Ecosia has just completed the construction of its second solar power plant and it’s up and running. All their solar energy generation combined has returned enough renewable energy to the grid to offset more than 100% of the energy used by Microsoft to power Ecosia searches. The company aims to produce 200% by the end of 2019. Furthermore, given that trees suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, each internet search actually removes 1kg of CO2 from the atmosphere the company says.
To make things fun, in the corner of the browser there’s a tracker that tells how many searches you’ve made using the search engine and its equivalent in trees so you know how many trees you’ve contributed to getting planted. In a world full of depressing climate and environmental news, that can make you feel pretty good.
