An easy way to plant a tree and help save the planet
If you want to help the environment a simple way to do it is to use Ecosia as your search engine particularly when you expect to be clicking through ads. They use money they earn to buy trees. They average what they do across each search but obviously they need to get ad revenue to generate income.
Ecosia is an environmentally well-meaning search engine set up by Christian Kroll in Germany. They calculate that every time you do an internet search using their service they will plant a tree. In fact, thanks to their solar plant and the Ecosia forests around the world, each search removes around 1 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere.
As of 2019 over 63 million trees had been planted and the goal is one billion by the end of 2020. It calls itself the world’s largest green internet firm and has 8 million users including me. Each time you go to search you see the tree count ticking over, it’s really inspirational.
It collaborates with rivals currently using the algorithms developed by Bing, Microsoft’s search engine and getting a share of their ad revenue. Initially it sought to work with Google. It also collaborates with experts and locals to run its tree planting and to ensure maximum impact with trees not just soaking up CO2 but also solving other problems.
In Sumatra the destruction of a quarter of the rainforest is threatening the survival of the Orang-Utan.
In Senegal Ecosia’s trees have replaced a mono-culture of peanuts and maize with “forest gardens” where the trees are surrounded by fruit, vegetables and medicinal herbs.
It works in an environmentally friendly way, its servers are all powered by renewable energy and its offices include a balcony where they grow herbs, walnuts and fast growing paulownia trees. While it has to store some data on users for cybersecurity it only keeps four days’ worth. It also is trying to find a way to steer search results to get more environmentally friendly results.
