What is Ecosia?
Ecosia is a ‘non-profit’ search engine similar to ‘Google’, that provides a third person service to connect people to what they need. By searching and connecting through Ecosia, you are not only acquiring the same service that you get when searching through Google, but you are also benefiting your environment. This is because the money Ecosia makes through mass searches through their platform, they keep 20% for the company and 80% is used in ‘green action’. With green action I refer to acting towards a more sustainable, more environmentally friendly green future.
How does Ecosia benefit from searches?
Every time you search in google and click on links, businesses make money. This is because advertisements in websites pay to be there, and the more clicks a link, add or website gets, the more they paid or are paid. Also, websites pay Ecosia to appear in their search engine, and sometimes they pay even more to appear in the top of the search engine, this way the website is visited more.
Ecosia earns approximately $0.005, which is 0.5 cents, for every search. For a single search, it is insignificant, but if you have millions of searches on Ecosia every day, significant profits start coming in. In perspective, Google has an average of 8.5 Billion searches per day, profiting 0.5 cents per search 8.5 billion times would make $42.5 million per day, but Ecosia has significantly less searches per day.
What projects is Ecosia focusing in?
One of the ongoing projects Ecosia has been doing for many years, is planting trees. The money they make from searches they use it to plant trees that’s right! For every 45 searches, they plant one tree. Or also, through one of their websites called Ecosia Travel, for every hotel room that is booked through there, a tree is planted too. All these trees account for more than 135 million trees!
Ecosia not only plants trees, but also invests in renewable energy. For example, in Germany they invested 20million EUR, enough to power more than 1,300 households using solar panels.
Ecosia is one of the minute percentage of companies that is considered ‘Carbon Negative’, which means that they produce more renewable energy than the energy they waste. In Ecosia, they produce twice as much green energy than what they use.
What other questions do you have about Ecosia! ASK ANYTHING!
Blog by Pablo Gasca Aristeguieta
Art by Tiffanie Cheng