‘Ecosia: The Search Engine That Plants Trees’
We are continually bombarded with frightening information about the climate catastrophe in our digital age, and this escalating (getting even more serious) situation is having an impact on those who are experiencing it first hand.
However, no matter where you live or how severe climate change is in your area, there are always things you can do in your daily life to contribute to sustainability and eco-friendliness.
And while we’re on the subject of the internet, Ecosia is one method you can use to assist in revitalizing animals, biodiversity, and communities across the world from the comfort of your own home and gadgets!
What’s Ecosia?
Ecosia is a Berlin-based search engine (a place on the internet to search for things, like Google) that is fully free and environmentally and socially responsible (does the right thing).
From the money made from people’s searches, the search engine and social organisation’s goal and motive is to help tree planting programmes all over the world in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, and Burkina Faso (to name a few!) and in aid of the environment, communities, and biodiversity!
With over 15 million active users (that’s loads!) and over 9,000 planting locations, the search engine has funded and planted over 137 million trees to date, with plans to plant much more in the future. It is also powered entirely by renewable energy (via their solar panels which produce twice as much energy needed for all searching operations).
They are not only environmentally conscious and driven, but also transparent (they don’t hide things or lie) and privacy conscious and driven; they do not store or sell your data to advertisers, anonymize your searches after one week, and keep your searches and connections secure and private. They also publish their monthly financial (how money is managed) and tree planting reports for everyone to see how much money they receive and how they spend it while following these privacy measures too!
All of these are strong reasons to move from Google to Ecosia, a socially and environmentally responsible search engine that can benefit communities, biodiversity and the environment all from the tips of your fingers!
– Written by Luca Assadi
Sources/Further Reading :
– Ecosia
