Did you know that you can plant a tree without getting up from your couch? Simply search for literally whatever you want online and a tree will be planted.
Ecosia is a search engine very similar to Google, however, they plant a tree somewhere in the world for every search you, and others, make. When you search on their website, they earn profits which are used to plant trees in many different locations that need them the most.
According to the website, there are over 7 million active users. That's a lot of tree huggers! They claim that over 48 million trees have been planted (as of January 2019). This number is constantly increasing with every passing second. They state that it takes approximately 1.1 seconds to plant a tree and costs 0.2 (about 0.23 USD) euros. Over 9.1 million euros (or 10.3 million USD) have been invested in these trees. Right now, they are working towards restoring Madagascar's forests which 90% of have been destroyed. Lemurs (better known as King Julien) rely on these trees on a daily basis. Watch the video below to learn more!
For all you skeptics out there, this website is completely free - no hidden costs or fees to use it! If you're wondering about profits and if they're really using it for planting trees, they provide financial reports for every month. They are super easy to read. The biggest chunk of their profits goes towards advertising, then planting the trees is next, paying their employees comes third and, finally, the last bit is saved should an unforeseen issue occur or if they want to expand their user-base or, if they end up not needing that extra money, they simply use it towards planting the trees. Not only is your data encrypted (protected from unwanted eyes), they don't sell your data to other companies nor do they permanently store your searches. Ecosia also does not use any external tracking tools, unlike Google Analytics, and you can even opt out of every sort of tracking on their website (they do collect only a tiny amount of data to improve their services).
Go ahead! Give it a try! Simply type Ecosia.com into your browser or add the extension onto Chrome (that's what I did and it's super simple to figure out and use!)
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