Did you know that you can plant trees right from your desk? Introducing Ecosia. At Riley Studio, we all use Ecosia as our default search engine and we want to encourage as many of our community as possible to make the simple switch too.

On March 27^th 2019, founder Christian Kroll announced that Ecosia had funded the planting of more than 53 million trees since it launched in 2009. How amazing is that! They have a goal to plant a billion trees, so tell your friends, family, work colleagues and let’s all support this positive cause together.

It might seem crazy at first, but let us explain how this B Corp is revolutionising the search engine.

Image via Ecosia

How it Works

1. Head to ecosia.org and look for a pop up in the right hand corner to make it your default search engine.
   
   
2. Type in your search term as usual.
   
   
3. Click on any result marked ‘Ad’. These advertisements, when clicked on, help Ecosia to generate its income. 80% of this income is then donated to tree plantation projects around the world.
   
   
4. You’ll be able to see how many trees you have planted in the right hand corner as well. On average you need about 45 searches to plant a tree.
   
   
5. Share it with all of your friends!

Image via Ecosia

Why is it important?

Forests are vital for the health of our planet. Covering 30% of the planet’s land mass, humans are destroying these crucial habitats on a mass scale every day. As the world looks to halt our global climate emergency, trees are the foundation of a sustainable future and part of the solution to our critical problem. Yet deforestation continues worldwide.

According to National Geographic and the World Bank, between 1990 and 2016, the world lost 502,000 square miles of forest, an area larger than South Africa. Since humans started cutting down forests, 46 percent of trees have been felled, according to a 2015 study in the journal Nature. About 17 percent of the Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed over the past 50 years, and losses recently have been on the rise.

The Green Leaf

As an additional feature, Ecosia selects website they feel share their mission and place a green leaf beside their webpage, to help users identify companies who are working towards a sustainable future. And guess what… they gave one to us!