If you didn’t know, I’m a big tree-lover. Like, I actually cry when I see trees being cut down – like hello?? Living things? Planet dying? It just seems so rude to kill trees that are doing no harm – like they’re actually giving you oxygen? Don’t be so ungrateful, damn.
Luckily, I’m able to help compensate for the deforestation by planting my own – with the help of Ecosia.
If you’ve never heard of Ecosia – it’s basically an eco-friendly Google. Ecosia’s a search engine that doesn’t just answer your questions, it plants trees, too. Every time you look something up on Ecosia, you help plant trees. So, the more stupid curious you are, the better really.
How Ecosia works:
Ecosia uses at least 80% of its profits made from searches to plant trees. The profits come from companies who pay for ‘ads’ so that their brands appear higher up the search results – when you click on their ‘ad’, they pay up. I know it sort of goes against your instinct of clicking on ads, but think of the TREES.
When using Ecosia, you get a wee ‘personal counter’ in your top right-hand corner, to show you how many searches you’ve made on it. Cad é an pointe you ask? Well, it works out that roughly 45 searches = 1 tree planted. As of now, I’ve made 370 on my new phone – although it’s really a lot more since I look up my stupidest questions in Incognito. I don’t want the shame of my idiocy to follow me around, like.
Over 135 million trees have been planted by Ecosia – and its 15 million users. I, I’m pleased to say, am one of them. I’ve been using Ecosia for years, so God knows how many trees I’ve helped plant with my stupid questions.
But, recently I discovered that you don’t just have to search to plant – you can actually buy trees from Ecosia’s online shop. Guess who got a nice wee 20-tree bundle for her bday, eh?
One of my many new year resolutions is to buy a tree bundle from Ecosia every month. I know that I already help plant some by using Ecosia as my search engine on my phone and laptop, but it’s nice being able to choose how many trees you want (a LOT), what you want them to do (besides grow) and where you want them to go.
This month, I planted 10 ‘Trees for Climate Action’. But, you can choose whether you want to plant trees for wildlife, trees to empower women, trees for clean water, trees to save endangered (tree) species or buy an impact bundle and help ‘em all.
I know that I can’t possibly plant as many trees as I see cut down (Musgrave, Cranmore and Malone Park have all gone on little ‘anti-tree sprees’ recently), but I figure that I can at least help. If I plant 10 trees every month, that’s 120 in one year – and that’s not bad going.
freckles and thoughts 