Plant a Tree by Searching the Web?

Why Planting Trees Is Important

Trees are important to us in numerous ways, you probably knew that trees produce oxygen and that oxygen is an important part of life itself.The best part of trees producing oxygen? A tree requires carbon dioxide (CO2) to produce oxygen, so it gives oxygen and it takes CO2 (commonly linked to global warming).

Even if you don't believe global warming is a thing that is happening right now you could probably agree that planting trees is a good thing. :-)

And with more and more trees and forests being cut down/destroyed it is safe to say that planting trees isn't a bad thing to do. ;-)

Planting a Tree

Planting a tree is easy, you only need some (fertile) soil and enough place for the tree to grow.

The planting part is the easiest, the hard part is maintaining a healthy tree to ensure it can grow as fast as possible.

It can take as long as 25 years for a tree to mature (a tree needs to be mature to provide the most amount of oxygen)

So unless you want a small decorative tree, it is important to keep it healthy and let it grow as long as possible!

Planting trees by searching the web?

It might seem crazy that you can grow a tree by searching the web, but it is actually possible!

There is a search engine (comparable to Google) that promises to plant trees with the revenue they make from people like you and me searching the web.

So how does it works? According to the Ecosia, they will plant a tree for (around) every 45 searches you do on their search engine. All for free and done automatically for you!

And according to the Ecosia, it's all privacy friendly!

How many trees can I plant by searching the web?

The amount of trees that can be planted because of your searches on the internet using the Ecosia search engine greatly varies on the number of searches you do per day.

According to statistic measuring websites, there are about 10 billion searches every day which roughly translates to around three searches per person per day!

So let's say you are the average internet user that uses a search engine three times each day and that Ecosia plants a tree for every 45 searches you do. In a year time, you will do 3*365 = 1095 searches and because of that Ecosia plants around 1095/45 = 24 trees!

But what if you are a heavy user of the internet and thus uses the search engine a lot? I took myself as an example and for the past four days, I used the Ecosia search engine and did a total of 93 searches! If I keep using the search engine as much as I did in the past four days I would contribute to the planting of around (93/4*365 = 8400 searches /45) 187 trees each year!

What could your impact be?

According to Ecosia each search result takes back 1 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) and provides the earth with oxygen.

So if you are an average internet user there will be around 24 trees planted that take back around 1100 kg of carbon dioxide all thanks to you!

If you are a heavy internet user that searches the web a lot these amounts can be quite a bit higher. :-)

How to get started?

It was easy to get started for me, I visited the Ecosia website and downloaded the Ecosia search extension for my browser. It was as easy as plug and play for me!

After you installed the extension for your browser or app for your phone each search you make will be done automatically through their search engine (you can still use every other search engine if you like, it doesn't help to plant trees sadly).