A SEARCH ENGINE THAT PLANT TREES ON EVERY TIME YOU BROWSE
SOMEONE IS SITTING IN THE SHADE TODAY BECAUSE SOMEONE PLANTED A TREE A LONG TIME AGO
-WARREN BUFFETT
But what if I tell you that you can plant a tree every time you search on the browser. Yes, Ecosia is a search engine that does that for. Ecosia promises to save the environment with your internet searches and it is one of the highest-rated apps on Google Play Store. But how do they do that?
HOW ECOSIA WAS STARTED
Christian Kroll (founder of Ecosia) |
It all started in 2009 when Christian Kroll travelled around the world to find inspiration for "a business model with a positive social impact". He actually became aware of deforestation when once he was travelling to South America. It is estimated that more than 1.5 billion tons of Co2 is released to the atmosphere due to deforestation and from there he learned what important role trees play.
He then moved to Berlin and started a search engine that can help for reforestation in the world. From here Ecosia was born. Ecosia claims that they have planted more than 105 million trees across 9000 biodiversity hotspots all over the world. On average, 45 searches are needed to plant a tree. Ecosia doesn't actually plant trees by itself, in fact, they donate 80% of its revenue to the non- profitable organisations like WWF(world wildlife fund) and WeForest which help in the process of reforestation. In April 2014, Ecosia was verified by third party B Corp. Std. ( that assess how much of a positive impact company have on workers, customers, community and environment). Thus we can easily trust the working and financial reports of the company. It is also said that every 1 search on Ecosia helps to kick out 1kg of Co2 from the atmosphere.
IS IT WORTH IT TO SWITCH TO ECOSIA?
For this question, let's compare Ecosia with one of our most used search engine, Google. Google is one of the most popular search engine and has billions of daily active users around the world. Will it be a good option to switch from google? let's see.
- So Ecosia is most popularly famous for planting trees, it is said to be eco friendly but if you see on the other side Google also actually uses 100% renewable energy to power its data centres whereas Microsoft bing( The majority of Ecosia's search results come from Microsoft Bing) uses only 44%. With this case, Ecosia seems to be less eco friendly than Google but Microsoft has committed to 75% reduction in Co2 emission in its whole operation by 2030. But Ecosia tree planting projects are carbon negative, moreover planted over 105 million trees will account of sucking almost 2.5 million tons of Co2. Thus, both the search engines are eco friendly so, there is actually no comparison in this field.
- The second thing is its privacy, Ecosia does not track its user's search history or the sites they have visited. All searches are SSL-encrypted. But Google tracks your data and search history to show you ads and make more money. So, in the privacy field, we can say Ecosia has a better privacy policy than Google.
- The third thing is their transparency, Ecosia is very transparent in terms of showing their revenues. They publish their financial reports every month and these reports can also be trusted as it is verified by B corp. Std. which you can't see in Google
Ecosia extension |
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