While the internet’s enormous responsibility for energy consumption and carbon emission constantly grows, the German startup Ecosia is trying to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
According to studies, the internet is responsible for 20% of all energy consumption and 5.5% of the CO2 that is emitted. While some companies (ie Google) switched to renewable energy sources, Ecosia is taking an even bigger step towards saving the earth – the company is working hard to remove already existing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Ecosia is trying stop the climate change by reducing the emitted CO2 and is doing so by planting trees. The search engine stated that 80% or more of its proceeds are used to plant trees all over the world. One search generates about half a Euro cent and as a tree costs about 0,2 euro, a user has to perform around 45 searches in order for the company to plant a tree.
The company originally launched in 2009, but it only managed to reach the international community in the last few years. As of January 2019 it has roughly 7 million users who contributed to over 9 million dollars being spent for the planting of trees. Overall Ecosia planted more than 53 million trees in countries all over the world, such as Spain, Kenya, Brazil, Peru and Indonesia.
The search engine is offered as a browser extension and a free app for both Android and iOS, therefore making it easy to help save the earth.