Green search engine Ecosia has celebrated two milestones, as it reached 20 million active users and funded the planting of more than 150 million trees.
The Berlin-based search engine is a not-for-profit social business that was founded in 2009.
It sinks profits into planting trees around the world and the organisation’s efforts have really started to take off recently, with 100 million of the trees planted over the last three years.
It delivers around half a billion searches every month and hopes to continue to see strong growth following a brand revamp.
Currently, Ecosia is most widely used in its native Germany, as well as the UK, France and the US.
Announcing the numbers last week, Ecosia said that recent growth had been boosted by a sharp rise in mobile searchers using its range of browser-based apps.
As well as tree planting, the carbon negative search engine has invested almost €30m (£25m) into renewable energy.
Ecosia says that its solar panels produce double the energy needed to power users’ searches, actively adding to the renewables and reducing fossil fuels in the power grid.
Searches for 20 of the most popular businesses in Ecosia’s search results are also set to come with a Climate Pledge Rating from this summer.
The ratings will show each company’s commitment to climate action and include the likes of Amazon, Meta and Spotify.
“Aiming for carbon neutral is not enough”
Ecosia CEO Christian Kroll said that the growth in user numbers gave him “hope for the regeneration of our planet” but added that other companies needed to move faster and aim beyond carbon neutrality.
He said that while the search engine is already “massively” carbon negative, the firm would continue to aggressively invest in green energy.
He also promised that Ecosia would introduce new green search features to help users of the service to be climate active while they searched.
Ecosia says that it ploughs 100% of its profits back into the environment, with at least 80% going towards its tree-planting projects.
The search engine is now one of the largest tree-planting organisations in the world and uses a range of techniques including satellite technology, geo-tagging, photographic data and field visits to improve and monitor its reforestation efforts.
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