You may have never heard of Ecosia (or maybe you have but have yet to give it a go). So you’ll just have to trust us when we say: try it once and you’re likely never to use Google, Bing or Yahoo again. This is because every time you search – for anything – you literally help plant a tree.
This may seem a touch Utopian but Ecosia, a Berlin, Germany-based search engine company, transparently donates 80% of its ad revenue to The Nature Conservancy’s “Plant a Billion Trees” program. To date, the search engine has successfully raised over $1.5 million for rainforest protection since its founding in December 2009.
And, just last week, the company announced it had reached another serious milestone: The Skoll award-winning organization B Lab recognized Ecosia as a Certified B Corp.
“Our mission has always been to create a more sustainable world,” said Ecosia Founder Christian Kroll. “In 2009, we promised our users to focus on impact instead of profit – and now there is an entire movement for our philosophy.”
That mission to cultivate a more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable world has the company working toward its goal of planting one million new trees in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest with The Nature Conservancy by August 2014.
“Our users understand strength in numbers because they see its impact everyday,” Kroll said. “Ecosia’s B Corp certification expands that energy to a growing network of smart, accountable businesses who know that social, environmental and economic sustainability is the only true way forward.”
So see ya later Google. We all love your renewable energy projects. But here at CleanTechies, we recently set Ecosia as our default search engine … and are busily searching and planning to help them plant a lot more trees this summer.
