We take a little breather from our usual music discussions to direct your attention towards a timely requirement. While we immerse ourselves within the world of music, be it the latest album by Eminem or Lil Uzi Vert, or a classic such as “Purple Rain” by Prince, the world around us is burning. So it is time to take some action that could result in some recourse to this global issue. This is where Ecosia helps. We don’t have to go out and plant trees to make the world a cooler place, Ecosia does that for us. All we have to do is use Ecosia. And it is as simple as using Google.
What is Ecosia?
By their own words, “Ecosia is like any other search engine, with one major difference: we use our profits to plant trees.”
You might ask why you haven’t seen them plant trees around you? Or even heard about them much. They plant trees where they are needed the most. Desertification is a real thing. The Amazon forest, known as the lungs of the planet Earth, is getting cut down in hectares on a monthly basis. So the Ecosia team focuses on planting trees where it is absolutely necessary.
Still, confused? Watch this video below for a brief introduction to what they do.
Ecosia donates around 80% of its profits to this cause. And they have published all their financial reports on their website for full transparency. The company is B-Lab certified, which means that its non-profit work is real.
Is Ecosia Legit or a Scam?
This is the biggest question by all novice users of Ecosia have. In one aspect, the company is B-Lab certified. In another, the company continuously uploads their project updates on its YouTube channel. Further, the non-profit organization, Our Changing Climate, researched and published a video about Ecosia’s work. Watch below.
Well, you don’t have to think 100 times to switch from Google to Ecosia. Their YouTube videos and podcasts they report updates on their tree plantation campaigns.
Also, Ecosia now boasts a user base of around 15 million who support this cause.
Where does Ecosia Plant Trees?
According to the company’s website, they have ongoing reforestation projects in;
- Colombia
- Malawi
- Peru
- Nicaragua
- Indonesia
- Australia
- India
- Kenya
- Madagascar
- Morocco
- Tanzania
- Uganda
- Spain
- Ethiopia
- Brazil
- Burkina Faso
- Senegal
- Ghana
Impressive, huh?
How does Ecosia Earn Money to Plant Trees?
Like any other search engine, Ecosia uses ad revenue to fund their operations and tree planting campaigns. As of now, the company has entered into a revenue-sharing agreement with Yahoo, and Bing provides the search engine back-end support to Ecosia.
Search results may not look as advanced and cut-and-polish like Google does. But it is a small price to pay for a greater good of the world.
Roughly, 45 searches you make through Ecosia, equal to the funding to plant one tree. Imagine the number of searches you do on the web for a month. You could have helped plant a small woods by now.
On the search engine’s homepage, you can see how many trees its userbase has helped plant since its initiation. At the time of writing this post, it stood at 86,885,040. Yes, that is 86 million trees!
We at Justrandomthings Music Community are proud to say that we are using Ecosia as our default search engine. Now it is your chance to help make a change in the world for the better.
Try the Ecosia search engine now!
Update: 15/12/2020
With the new iOS 14.3 update released in December 2020, Apple enabled its iPhone users to set Ecosia as their default search engine. Now, Ecosia ranks among the other elite search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. This is another checkmark for the legitimacy of Ecosia and an acknowledgment of the environmental service they do.