From a Search to a Seed: How a Search Engine is Saving The Rain Forest

Making Green by Making Green

It's common knowledge that big businesses like Nestle are trying to destroy the world, and it's up to startups, Ma & Pa shops, trendy West-Coasters, and selfless techies to stop them. But how? Well, seeing that the big picture is comprised of many brushstrokes, it comes down to that old cliché, "Every little bit counts." Take Ecosia as example, a new search engine that uses clicks to generate funds to offset deforestation in the Amazon... 

The Atlantic Forest, Brazil. Can you believe this Eden is highly threatened by deforestation? Can you believe if you search "Atlantic Forest" with Ecosia you can help save it?

Search engines make money (in the case of Google, lots and lots and lots of money) by charging advertisers a seemingly insignificant per-click fee for prime results-page real estate. (In the case of Google, that would be the first three or four results at the top, the ones highlighted and often unrelated to your search.) After a few million clicks and the search engine has made enough profit to make you wish you'd spent your lunch money on their low IPO. 

The Atlantic Forest region of Brazil

But Ecosia is quite different. It donates 80% of the revenue from "EcoAds" and "EcoLinks"to Plant A Billion Trees, an organisation with the goal, as the name suggests, of planting 1,000,000,000 trees. Being that one dollar allows PABT to plant one tree, it's pretty impressive that Ecosia is able to donate that exact amount for every EcoAd and EcoLink clicked. "A dollar plants an Ice Cream Bean Tree in the endangered Atlantic Forests," reports FastCo.Exist in it's article on Ecosia. (Incidentally, I see why Plant A Billion Trees doesn't abbreviate its name; anyone who reads P-A-B-T immediately tries to conclude with -'s B-l-u-e R-i-b-b-o-n.)

This important, because the numbers are astonishing. Between 17-20% of all CO2 emissions are due to deforestation, which, according to Greenpeace is more "than all the cars, trucks, planes, and automobiles in the world." In the Amazon, deforestation claims 28% of the rain forest annually. Yeah. That's like Oh Shit high. But Ecosia's numbers aren't dismissive either. For starters, the company is 100% Carbon free. That deserves a Hell Yeah. And for all you potential investors, since the relaunch in August, the search engine has persuaded 2.5 million users to switch from Google and other search engines. That's a 40% growth in four months, "60% outside of non-German-speaking markets," according to FastCo.

For the record, Purlieus is an Ecolink!

The Nitty Gritty of Green

So how does it work? Ecosia operates with a Yahoo-like algorithm and aesthetic, albeit more no-frills. If you're a Google user, that's cool, too. Ecosia let's you switch to Google's search engine very easily. Unfortunately, doing this doesn't allow for EcoAds and EcoLinks to donate advertising revenue, but it remains 100% carbon-free. 

As you can see, the tabs below the search bar allow you to switch from Ecosia to Google, and let you narrow your search with news results, images, maps, and all the standard features of top-tier search engines. It also shows you how many trees you've your clicks have planted. That's a feel good app, for sure! Another cool feature is that searching certain companies yields results showing how green that company is. 

Another seemingly insignificant, yet actually quite ingenious, feature is the ability to turn off the cartoonish background on the Ecosia homepage.

Design-wise, it allows users to search within a slightly more mature environment, which could bode well for employees who want to use it as the default search engine at work, or during presentations.

But, obviously, a search engine alone won't save the rain forest. For this idea to work, it needs searchers. That's you, that's me. I've already made Ecosia my default search engine in lieu of Google. Now, while Google's searches, in my opinion are slightly better, I base that solely of how high each one ranked my name. Not exactly reason to NOT to lend a helping hand. So, here's my deal with you, dear reader. First, make Ecosia your browser's default search engine. That's easy to do by going to your browser's Settings/Preferences (for PC/Mac, respectively). And actually use it, spend some time with it, let it win you over, steal you from Google, and bring you on to the Green side. But here's the kicker (and kind of a test to see who's read the whole article). Click the share button at the bottom of the article, and e-mail it or Facebook it or Google+ it or whatever. If the share numbers at the bottom of the page reach 200 or more, I'll dye my hair green and post pictures here on Purlieus and all across Facebook. Deal. No shit.

Oh, and in case you're curious, Google's reasoning for not being charitable, is quite sound. At least form a business and fairness standpoint:

While we do appreciate your charitable efforts, this practice is not permitted by our program policies. We want users to click on ads because they are interested in the products or services offered by the advertiser, not because they are interested in supporting a site or a charity. Using this type of language can draw undue attention to the ads, and we aren't able to verify whether earnings are actually donated to the third-party mentioned on each site. As a result, we don't allow publishers to offer these types of incentives.