Ecosia: The Search Engine You Didn't Know You Wanted.
Do you want to plant trees but make absolutely no effort whatsoever? With Ecosia your daily internet searches fund reforestation! #ecosia #trees
Ecosia is a web browser like Google or Bing. Unlike Bing, Ecosia is a very good search engine that, in my very professional opinion, rivals Google. In fact, it doesn't only rival it, I think it's better and this is why: Ecosia, for one, actually pays its taxes (yes I said it), and for two, Ecosia uses its revenue from ads and click rates to plant trees.
As you can see from the picture above, Ecosia has a counter which records the number of trees successfully planted and it is constantly going up. The large number you see and that I likely cannot say aloud without messing it up is the amount of trees that Ecosia have planted so far, but when I publish this post and you read it literally every digit will probably be wrong. That's how quickly this counter is moving.
The great thing about Ecosia is that they write several articles explaining the work they do and how they actually plant these trees. The first thing to note is that their counter does not include the 25% of trees that likely won't survive, but that number would be far higher if they took a completely linear approach to their planting mission:
plant any old tree in any old place --> hope for the best. Linear approach (sort of).
Instead they choose areas that need trees for their communities to prosper and where the environment can be vastly enriched by them. They prevent tree loss by carefully choosing to plant trees that don't just survive in difficult conditions but thrive there. They also choose plants that are beneficial to the rural communities. There are two reasons for this: the first is, it helps rural communities (when in need of captain obvious please get in touch), the second is a little more complicated, it prevents felling. For Ecosia, one of the biggest contributors to the 25% tree loss problem is that they get cut down. Poor communities accept money from big corporations to fell this precious resource but Ecosia have excellent community outreach programmes that reduce this occurrence by educating rural villages on the value of trees.
Here is an example of what I'm potentially failing to explain: In Burkina Faso, a very arid country in the North-West of Africa, Ecosia have planted the Baobab tree, also known as the "Tree of Life". This tree can live up to 5000 years and is iconic in Africa: the Baobab fruits are so healthy I can't even begin to list all of its great benefits and it is so unheard of that Africa is missing out on 1 billion dollars worth of profit because most of the fruit cannot be consumed in time (we can change that though by learning about it). It can also provide shelter and water, it is fire resistant and is used to make cloth and rope. By planting this tree in Burkina Faso, Ecosia gives the rural villages a very good reason to turn down corporations looking to cut trees down because it actively helps these communities thrive.
If this is a project you would like to support, all you have to do is to search "Ecosia Download", click the link to download it on your computer and change your settings to make Ecosia your default browser. You can also download the Ecosia app on your phone through the app or play store. If you get stuck simply ask a more tech-savvy individual to do it for you...
For every 45 or so searches (fewer if you click on advertised links) you will have planted a tree! Just imagine if entire companies used Ecosia as their default browsers!
I think Ecosia is so exciting and I really love what they do. I cannot stress enough how valuable taking those 30 seconds to ask a more tech-savvy human to set it up for you are. It is such an easy way to make a difference and I want everybody to know about it.
So what are you waiting for?
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