As people have begun to become aware of the critical state our Earth is in, many have sought ways to contribute to bettering our environment. However, us 21st century folks like to do things as “efficiently” as possible, so we like to help out but preferably with minimal movement. Well, worry no more, because there is a terrific way to plant trees, with almost no effort, all in the comfort of your own home while you’re browsing the web. The solution is Ecosia. Ecosia is an alternative to Google, Bing and other mainstream search engines. For about every 45 searches, Ecosia plants a tree. There are a few hotspot locations such as Madagascar and various African and South American countries that receive many of the efforts.
According to the website:
A region must meet the following criteria to achieve hotspot classification:
- At least 1,500 species of vascular plants (>0.5% of the world’s total) are endemic.
- At least 70% of the original natural vegetation has been lost.
What Ecosia strives to do besides planting trees and generally helping the environment as a whole, is restore the ecosystem in that particular region all whilst helping the society and the people that inhabit that region. Ecosia, in a sense, “employs” locals, who help plant the trees and work with their environment, thus providing a steady income for themselves and making Ecosia’s job easier and efficient. Ecosia is a game changer in that it is helping these societies in more ways than one and it’s something so simple that everyone with a device that can connect to the internet is able to utilize. In case you aren’t sold just yet, Ecosia publishes a yearly report of all its spending and revenue to maintain transparency and guarantee it’s users that they are legit.
The environment is not in a good place right now, the Earth is hurting and humans are a large part of it, so doing something as simple (and free!) as using a different search engine is the least we can do to somehow make up for the decades of the abuse our home has endured at our hands. As of now, Ecosia has planted almost 20,000,000 million trees and by 2020 they hope to have planted one billion. Be apart of the solution and switch to Ecosia, you’ll feel better and so will the Earth!
