"PLANT TREES WHILE YOU SEARCH THE WEB!"
Ecosia is a search engine with a difference. A social business run by a small group of hard working dedicated people, hoping to make the world a better place. In 2009 its founder, Christian Kroll, developed the idea of a search engine that planted trees after discovering the importance of them during his travels in South America. He visited reforestation projects, studied books about climate change and globalization, and became convinced that we should all do more to save our rainforests. So now, each time the web is searched with Ecosia, 80% of the profits from the search advertisement revenue goes to support tree planting programs. (If you are interested in seeing a detailed breakdown of their spending, you can do by taking a look at their financial reports which they post each month here.)
Why trees? Well as a tree grows, it absorbs a lot of carbon dioxide and filters particulates out of the atmosphere, which is one of the most effective ways to combat climate change, but it doesn’t end there. Larger forests can even create clouds which in turn reflect the sunlight and cool our planet. They improve the conditions of soil by protecting it from erosion and creating a productive and fertile land, whilst regulating water cycles and preventing floods. Microclimates are created increasing ground water levels, acting like a sponge to prevent droughts. This then improves the local agriculture and yielding forest products that can be sold and consumed by surrounding communities. Worldwide the livelihood of 1.6 billion people depends on forests. Not to mention the big O they create allowing us to live and breathe!
Every Euro spent funds projects that have been scouted to have the greatest possible impact, helping both the local communities and the environment in numerous ways. For example, they currently have a project running in Burkina Faso which is halting desertification and providing local people with new economic opportunities, whilst their Indonesian project is empowering the local communities to fight back against palm oil monocultures. I will leave a link here to their blog where you can keep up to date and find out more about the 6 projects they currently have running across the world.
Their aim is to plant 1 billion trees. It may sound ambitious but at over 14 million to date, they are on track to reach their goal with the help of their web users. You can join and support this environmental movement by making Ecosia your new search engine, (information on how to do so I will leave here), and keep track of how many trees your web browsing has led to being planted! It only takes a small change to become part of a huge community that’s making a big impact towards the future of our planet.
You can also show your support and stay up to date by following them on Facebook, Instagramand Twitter, all of which I will hyperlink in for you to take a look at. And of course, be sure to check out their website for yourselves here. I will include a few extra links below that you may find useful, just in case you need a little more persuading…
I think it’s a brilliant cause and strongly encourage everyone to get on board. After all, there’s little point in protecting our planets beautiful creatures if when all is said and done they have no place to call home.
Meg x
https://info.ecosia.org/project
http://documents.ecosia.org/374680/8921345
(All photographs used in this post belong to ECOSIA and have been sent and used with their consent)