What is Ecosia?
As the title suggests, Ecosia is a search engine that commits 80% of its revenue toward funding tree-planting operations around the world. Every click, share, and search made through the engine generates a couple cents of ad revenue for the company. Just about anyone can download their chrome extension from the comfort of their desk, making it ideal for even the most sedentary online activists.
Who’s Behind it All?
This is Christian Kroll, the founding face of Ecosia. Motivated by 2009’s United Nation climate talks in Copenhagen Germany, Christian and his co-founder, Tim Schumancher began developing Ecosia. From there the team managed to grow their platform large enough to directly fun the German sector of the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) to help protect the Juruena National park from deforestation in 2010.
Why Use Ecosia When there’s already Google?
Besides being able to search for a good cause, here are some other great reason to add the Ecosia extension to your chrome browser:
- Your privacy is guaranteed
- Ecoisia won’t archive what you search, only the quantity of your searches is documented.
- The only data being tracked is the number of searches you make, represented by a tree icon in the top left of your screen.
- The ratio of searches to trees planted IRL is about 45:1.
- Search to your heart’s content knowing that each click is a small investment adding up towards a greener world.
- Ecosia is VERY transparent about its spending to the public
- Around 80% of profits generated from non-invasive advertisements towards planting trees.
- Even if you use ad-blocking software, your searches still contribute to Ecosia by increasing its engagement numbers, making it more attractive to advertisers.
- Ecosia’s search algorithms are just as reliable as the top competitors.
- Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc…
- You don’t need to sacrifice efficiency
- And best of all, it’s 100% FREE at no cost to you!
Where has Ecosia made a difference?
Since 2009 the company has flourished into a tree-planting superpower which funded an estimated 73,527,771 new seedlings in 2019. Their influence spans far and wide from Tanzania in Africa, to Peru in South America, to Australia’s Down Under. Through their continuously updated blog, you also can stay up to date on the growing amount of projects that are being funded by Ecosia.
Ecosia is partnered with the likes of:
- The World Wildlife Federation
- Eden Reforestation Project
- The Great Green Wall
- And many more organizations committed to pushing against deforestation around the world.
Since this blog post, Ecosia has helped plant about
97,223,474 trees!
How you can get involved
Make Ecosia your Primary search engine today
- Click the link at the bottom of this post OR search for “ecosia” through your best search engine to find ecosia’s search page.
- Setting up the extension can be done in just a few clicks
- Their extension will be ready to use immediately after downloading