Ecosia - eco-friendly search engine

What "a Click" can achieve

"Click". The slight sound everybody can hear while using a mouse. Thanks to it, a user can move quickly on the screen, select and delete information, enlarge or reduce a picture. Employing it to surfer the Internet, a "click" can almost bring us the world. So, why don't make it really useful? That is what eco-friendly search engines have achieved: a way to make greener our presence on the Net. ECOSIA.ORG is the latest one


By ISABEL BENITEZ (isabel.benitez@wavemagazine.net)
from Seville, SPAIN


April 2010. More than 54 million square meters of rainforest saved. This is the balance ECOSIA.ORG can make of its first five months of work. Five months of increasing income and benefits for environment.

Up to today, at least 100,000 people access ECOSIA every day; a huge group of users who do their bit to preserve biodiversity and fight climate change. ECOSIA.ORG is what we call a green search engine. It works like Google, Yahoo and other popular Internet services with a peculiar feature: each search helps to preserve the planet and guarantee its survival.

Run by Yahoo, Bing and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), ECOSIA gives 80 per cent of its income to a rainforest protection program. Of course, it is not the search engine itself that plants a tree or looks after animal species, but it contributes to the project collecting money.

Revenues come from sponsored links. Short ads placed by companies in order to get new customers. That's why when a user types the title of a book on the Internet it often appears the name of a popular bookshop where he may buy it. This kind of links generates profits, advertising income to ECOSIA, and ECOSIA donates them to WWF.

This way, ECOSIA helps environment without compromising - of course - search results: "As ECOSIA does not provide the search answers itself - Yahoo and Bing do it - it provides us high quality search results which make this engine extremely user friendly", says Jana Kroll, responsible for communication of ECOSIA.

Why ECOSIA?

Using an eco-friendly search engine like ECOSIA can be easy and, at the same time, help the ecology organization to care for Juruena riverside and its ecosystem, one of the most emblematic places in the Brazilian Amazonia. In fact, Juruena, officially declared "National Park" in 2006, is protected by ARPA Program (Amazon Region Protected Areas) which is supposed to overcome its extinction before 2016. This is also WWF's aim: the environmental association works to preserve Juruena, implementing local plans on education and employment.

Jörn Ehler, a spokesman for WWF-Germany, emphasizes that its main value is local population's power to change things. "In 2010, we want to generate, at least, 50,000 euro to the National Park in Brazil through cooperation. We know it is not enough to finance our activities there, but it is crucial to find a solid base. WWF-Germany invests 500,000 euro in this project every year. So the more money we get from ECOSIA, the better for Juruena environment".

Responsible search engines

Nevertheless, ECOSIA.ORG is just an example. In the last five years, it has appeared lots of different search services which contribute to protect Earth's lungs and biodiversity. These green searchers define a new way of using information and communication technologies; a new responsible and conscious employ of computers and the Internet.

Jörn Ehlers finds it a sample of how technology has revolutionized social commitment and civic movements. Cyberactivism gives NGOs the possibility to spread their message with no restrictions. There are no borders, there are no physical, even psychological, barriers. Because those who didn't have time enough to join voluntary work or environmental programs, those who thought civic engagement was just for a few people, can contribute to demand the abolition of the slavery or the prohibition of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) with just a click.

The spokesman for WWF adds: "On the Internet, we can find new ways to protest and participate. United States presidential election showed us an example on social media power. It is the beginning. New media offer also a new way of control, of civic control of the power. A politician can't make a mistake praying for not being discovered. The World Wide Web doesn't keep quiet. In Germany, we could recently see a politician's xenophobic message thanks to information technologies and networks. It was recorded, uploaded and shared on the Net. They quickly were everywhere, every house and every department of the country... and this should be social organizations' aim".

Online campaigns to collect signatures and fundraise, e-mails, and, of course, eco-friendly browsers and search engines become more and more common.

The last ones - ecological search engines - offer surfers two different services. Some offers an intelligent selection of links to increase environmental awareness. Green Maven, Green Link Central or Ecoseek, for instance, scours the green web. Others, benefits donation to carbon offsets and similar causes, as Ecoogler and Good Search do.

ECOSIA.ORG matches up with this profile, but it is doubly eco-friendly: each ECOSIA user save 2,000 square meters of tropical rainforest every year and don't waste energy - nor increase CO2 emissions - to do it. ECOSIA's servers and installations work with renewable resources.

According to Alex Wissner-Gross, a researcher of Harvard University, two Google searches generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle. A single search is like leaving a light on for an hour.

When somebody surfs the Internet he or she is using electrical energy. But most of electrical supply comes from inefficient energy sources: petrol and carbon. Turning on a computer - as a light or a fridge - increases greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. When a surfer is connected to the Internet and asks for a website o some information, there is a computer working but also a great mass of servers - electrical machines - which provides him with an answer. Green electricity reduces its impact.

Becoming a "good" surfer

Jana Kroll insists: "Everybody should be concerned about the world's climate, even people who were not an environmental activist before. ECOSIA makes it easy for everybody to be active in climate protection, without paying anything! People just have to change their search engine. Of course, there is much more to do to actually rescue world's climate, but ECOSIA can be a part of this".

The responsible for communication of ECOSIA assures using it is easy. Surfers can type their search terms in its homepage, ECOSIA.ORG. But they can also download and install it in their computer. When it is used as the main search engine, it shows how much rainforest each user has already saved.

Ecologists remember, anyway: choosing a green searcher is not enough. Small daily actions as riding a bike or walking, instead of going work by car, and buy low consumption lights can help save the planet.

Instruction manual

Using ECOSIA is easy and environmentally "healthy". However, though every search is useful, surfers shouldn't employ this search engine to simply produce income to the green cause.

Eco-friendly search engines work in partnership with other major search engines. For instance, ECOSIA joins forces with Bing and Yahoo. They guarantee good answers. But if they discover the fault, they immediately stop helping environmentalist goals.

Besides, searches waste energy. Even when it comes from renewable resources, it is better not to consume it, if it is not precise.

So a responsible search engine also needs a responsible use.




(Published: 10.04.2010.)