Tip # #82 Sustainable online search

Planting trees while you browsing the web? You don’t have to make any effort besides downloading the search engine, and you’re helping Mother Nature. So while you search the web anyway, you can actually help the planet.

Ecosia is a search engine like Google, but very different: they use their ad revenue to plant trees where nature and people need them most.

Ecosia is a search engine based in Berlin, Germany. It donates 80% of its profits to nonprofit organizations that focus on reforestation. It considers itself a social business, is CO2-negative and claims to support full financial transparency and protect the privacy of its users. Ecosia is also B Lab certified (source).

As of May 2021, the company claims to have planted over 125 million trees since its inception. What they do is send a massive part of their ad revenue to organizations that do. It worked well so far.

According to Ecosia, the company helps plant a tree every 30 seconds. It is quite a number, as it amounts to almost 3,000 trees per day.

Even though it sounds too good to be true, it seems that this search engine is legit and they do their social responsibility part right. Even if they would plan half the proclaimed trees, it's still better than nothing, so to me it's no brainer.

So which search engine you will use today?