
Plant trees while you search the web - nbrempel
https://info.ecosia.org/what
======
WA
If you don't click on ads, or have an Adblocker installed, you generate no
money for Ecosia. Thus, no trees get planted.

I think it's important to point this out, because in their marketing, they
make it sound as if searching alone is enough. There's also this little
counter in the upper right corner. 45 searches (on average) are required to
plant a tree. Of course, only if you click on an ad.

You could even argue that you cause more environmental damage, because Ecosia
is then just an unnecessary wrapper around Bing consuming energy (although
it's probably not much).

Edit: Added second paragraph

Edit2: Source is their FAQ: [https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/206019452-How-d...](https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/206019452-How-does-Ecosia-make-money-)

~~~
Hoasi
> I think it's important to point this out, because in their marketing, they
> make it sound as if searching alone is enough.

Thank you for pointing that out. There is no point using it for search if you
are using ad-blocking software.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Hmm? It's trivial to configure site-specific exceptions for any decent ad-
blocker, no?

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jordigh
This really feels like greenwashing to me.

The purpose of ads is (1) to make you buy something you didn't need before the
ad made you aware of it, or (2) to make you choose the advertised brand
amongst competing brands when you buy a product comparable to the advertised
one.

Runaway consumption is what has gotten us into this ecological mess in the
first place.

Watching ads to replant trees just sounds very strange.

~~~
pier25
> _Runaway consumption is what has gotten us into this ecological mess in the
> first place._

In part. If instead of almost 8 billion humans there were 4 billions we
wouldn't be in this mess either.

~~~
bad-joke
> If instead of almost 8 billion humans there were 4 billions we wouldn't be
> in this mess either.

I'm not sure your logic follows. The US outputs roughly 13% of global CO2
emissions despite having 4% of the world population.

If the ratio of population to CO2 output was scaled in this case, 7.5 billion
US citizens would output 118,000 Mt of CO2 per year. Halving that (to less
than 4 billion humans) would be 59,000 Mt of CO2 per year, and the current
global output is 37,000 Mt per year.

~~~
pier25
Half the population would produce half the emissions and consume half the
resources considering the same emissions per capita per country and equivalent
population density per country.

~~~
sanbor
We cannot kill half of the population but we can consume half. We could avoid
replacing phones every two years. We could eat less meat. We could avoid
having so many cars.

~~~
shapiro92
you cannot consume half. (not talking about phones) but if a human needs X
food then he cant half it. you can replace with X with half Y and half Z but
the logistics is the same.

The issue is overpopulation. You need a specific amount of resources to
sustain that number. you cant half it without halfing the population

~~~
sanbor
How do you explain that people in US produces 4 times the average CO2
emissions?

------
elektor
[https://blog.ecosia.org/content/images/2019/06/Financial-
Rep...](https://blog.ecosia.org/content/images/2019/06/Financial-Report-
May19_english@2x.png)

From their infographic, you can see that Ecosia donates 51.6% of its income to
planting trees, the rest going to employee incomes, reserves, and "spreading
the word".

You can save yourself the extra step and simply donate to the foundations that
Ecosia donates money to:

edenprojects.org hommesetterro.com greenbeltmovement.org itpa.org.br

~~~
cglace
I don’t see why this is an either or situation. You could do both.

------
jk2faster
I used ecosia for a period of few months, and stopped when I read this their
privacy policy([https://info.ecosia.org/privacy#privacy-policy-
section-7](https://info.ecosia.org/privacy#privacy-policy-section-7)):

> For example, when you do a search on Ecosia we forward the following
> information to our partner, Bing: IP address, user agent string, search
> term, and some settings like your country and language setting.

So when a search is done, our IP address is send to Bing.

I really love the idea of planting trees from profit, and have nothing against
ecosia. Just commented to inform readers. <edit> Before getting downvoted into
oblivion, I would like to make it clear that I'm not saying ecosia is
unethical or that everyone should stop using it because of this. For some it
matters, for some it doesn't and ecosia seems a great choice for those whom
this doesn't matter. I'm just posting it so that those who do care(about their
IP being send to Bing) can be aware(since I wasn't for a few months). </edit>

~~~
okmokmz
I'm a strong advocate for digital privacy and opposed to the majority of data
collection that occurs, but this comment is FUD. None of the info that you
listed would be private if you used Bing normally, so if you're worried about
them having that info you'd need to stop using search engines all together

>So when a search is done, our IP address is send to Bing.

Explain why you believe that's a negative? If you use Bing normally they would
know your IP as well

>user agent string

Again, using bing normally will allow them to see this information

>search term

Obviously required to be sent to bing

>some settings like your country and language setting

Again, this is information that would be available to Bing if you use their
service normally

~~~
jk2faster
>Explain why you believe that's a negative? If you use Bing normally they
would know your IP as well

I'm a bit uncomfortable in letting MicroSoft associate my IP with what I
search daily. I use GitHub and Linkedin and most of the time I'm logged in to
at least one of those services. Now I don't know for sure if Bing associates
these searches to my account based on the IP(someone can shed some light on
this?). StartPage and DuckDuckGo both use third party searches but they don't
share user
IP([https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...](https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/159/22/do-
you-share-my-ip-address-with-google))

For other details like search term, country etc... I absolutely understand
that they are needed to be send. I just quoted them as a sentence.

If it wasn't for the IP sharing, I would be a happy ecosia user :)

~~~
okmokmz
I definitely understand the desire to not have one's IP tied to their search
history/browsing in some cases, but as this service makes no mention of being
an anonymous or private search engine I don't think your critique is an actual
issue with the service. Your use case simply doesn't match the purpose of this
search engine

~~~
jk2faster
You're right, privacy is not their selling point. But they do have many
phrases like "We don’t store your searches permanently" and "We don’t sell
your data to advertisers" in their website, which are technically true but I
misunderstood that they don't store my IP either because of those. I came
across the text I quoted in the parent comment months later when I came across
a thread in r/privacy and I passed it on. StartPage and DuckDuckGo still makes
money from ads and doesn't share user IP. It would have been great if Ecosia
functioned similarly, and in that case many people like me who are concerned
about sharing IP with Bing(or other services) can join Ecosia for search.

------
dominikmauritz
I switched to Ecosia about a month ago. IMHO search result quality is at about
90 % to 95 % compared to Google. I believe Ecosia is using Bing in the
background. They are planting trees and claim to respect my privacy. Overall
I'm happy with Ecosia and started recommending it to friends.

PS. I'm German and do searches in German and English.

------
Hamuko
I'd rather just send $5 somewhere. If they earn a few cents per ad clicked,
I'd have to click like 250 different ads in order to get to that $5.

~~~
cwkoss
Advertising spending is inversely correlated with product quality.

------
chaosfox
ecosia financial reports: [https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-
tree-planti...](https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-
planting-receipts/)

~~~
fourier_mode
For 170k euors spent in salaries they are able to hire 39 people. Seems quite
less from the US standard.

~~~
war1025
That value is per month, which would be roughly 2 million euros / year. An
average of 50k euro / (person * year), seems pretty reasonable.

------
k_sze
There was a recent article about planting the wrong kind of trees in Ireland
[1]. What do we know about Ecosia’s tree-planting partners? It would be great
to have more oversight over the tree-planting, maybe even let users have
“voting” power (decide which tree-planting partner to benefit from the
proceedings of your search results, kinda like how Humble Bundle let’s you
choose which charity to give to).

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20380793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20380793)

------
kawera
Previous discussion with interesting comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19324766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19324766)

------
rushi_agrawal
I remember there was a link on HN which had a list of sites similar to this
which are greener in general (i.e. which plant trees, or which use only green
energy like solar, etc). I've been searching for it but couldn't find it. If
someone has it, can they post it ? Thanks!

~~~
stffndtz
Could it be [https://ethical.net/resources/](https://ethical.net/resources/)?

~~~
rushi_agrawal
Thanks! Yes, this is what I was looking for.

------
RenRav
7 million active users, 70 million trees... only 10 trees have been planted
per user?

I like the idea but I wonder on average just how many searches it takes for
one tree to be planted.

~~~
amelius
Is anyone verifying these claims?

~~~
jordigh
I would like to know that too, because currently all sources on the Ecosia
Wikipedia page are either self-published or primary, so the article reads like
an ad. If this really is working and we can all truly combat deforestation and
global warming by watching Ecosia's ads, I'd like to know.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia)

------
void_nill
I just tried to use the search engine without Javascript and that's a really
bad result. [1]

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/ybtiAkk](https://imgur.com/a/ybtiAkk)

~~~
rawrmaan
I doubt they bother wasting their resources on optimizing for the 0.001% of
people who have JS disabled.

~~~
1v1id
Well I just tried this in my text-based browser on my Commodore 64 and it
looks terrible

------
CTOSian
for sure you plant too, money on ecosia managers' pockets. "Adblock till the
sun burns out"

