How I Plant Trees by Searching the Web
It's quite evident from most of my paintings that I love trees and being in the forest. I didn't discover this love until I started creating art on a regular basis and could see that naturally, I liked to draw and paint trees. So it only made sense that when I stumbled upon Ecosia that I had to make a change.
Ecosia
Ecosia is a search engine that uses its ad revenue to plant trees all across the world - currently they have projects in Madagascar, Peru and Burkina Faso. Each one of these projects serves a specific purpose and solves problems inherent to the region. For example, the project in Burkina Faso helps stop the Sahara desert from spreading further South and brings back fertile land and economic opportunities to the surrounding community.
Take a look at the graphic below from Ecosia's site to see why trees are so important, especially in today's world where more trees are being cut down every day at an alarming rate.
At the time of writing this post, I've only been using Ecosia for a little over a month and so far it says I've helped plant 722 trees - So, maybe on average I plant 700 trees per month x 12 months = 8400 a year! The great thing about this is that I haven't done anything out of the ordinary, other than change my default search engine to Ecosia - so now when I type something in the address bar to search, it does it through Ecosia instead of Google - which never added any value to me or the rest of the world like Ecosia.
So far Ecosia has planted over 5.9 million trees! Let's do what we can to make the number grow. If this post can reach at least 10 more people to start using Ecosia as their default search engine - that'll be 84,000 more trees planted per year. And as we now know, the benefits are valuable to all life on earth.
Below: Chickaree in a Giant Sequoia.
But Is It Perfect?
Pros
Plants trees just by searching the web
Easy to Use - Just set as your default search engine on your browser and you're set
Supports the environment, small business and local communities around the globe - not a giant corporation like Google or Yahoo.
Cons
Missing built-in features like a timer/calculator, etc.. which Google provides - Not a big deal to me but they are working on incorporating features like these plus more
Ecosia isn't perfect but I can deal with the tiny inconveniences and small changes I've been used to from using Google basically my entire life. I'd rather make a difference in the world in some way, even if it is a minor change - rather than knowing I could make a difference and not make it. This post isn't sponsored by Ecosia - I just wanted to spread the word any way I can.
Be sure to check out Ecosia's site and read up on how they operate, what they're doing and how they are making a difference. From what I've seen, they are a great and transparent company focused on making a positive change in the world.
