200 million trees
blog.ecosia.org
Here's to 200 million thriving trees, and counting.
  • fiat_lux@kbin.social
    34·
    10 months ago

    Can we… see them?

    Edit: some quick math, the minimum recommended space between trees is 3m, 200 million of those is 600km² / 148k ac , which would make the space required bigger than 17 countries (larger than Andorra but very slightly smaller than Saint Lucia). They have a blog with their tree planting updates but I wish there were more photos.

    • LibreFish@lemmy.worldEnglish
      252·
      10 months ago

      The big turning point came in 2018 when I signed a legally binding commitment to ensure that Ecosia could never be sold and that 100% of our profits would always go to the planet. Today, your searches enable us to work with partners to plant and protect 1,250 species of trees across 95,000 locations globally.

      Keywords plant and protect. Basically a papermill can plant trees to harvest 20 years later and in the meantime sell carbon offsets for 19 years then harvest and replant.

      Can’t say for sure they’re doing it, but from what I hear just about every tree is eligible for a “carbon offset” and some companies abuse it by saying “this is our tree” as long as it’s not cut down within x months and use it as a carbon offset or a “protected tree.”

        • LibreFish@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          They might buy them though to inflate the number of protected trees. I’m not saying they are, just providing a potential reason for such a large number

          • jol@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            3·
            10 months ago

            My understanding from reading their posts is that the counter only counts planted trees. Other things like building solar panels and fight deforestation are not even counted like that. That’s why they said they are phasing out the individual tree counter, because it doesn’t account for all those other things.

  • nudny ekscentryk@szmer.infoEnglish
    5523·
    10 months ago

    This is a necessary reminder that Ecosia is a scam:

    • they don’t “plant trees” but rather contribute very little amounts to existing programmes
    • “Every search plants a tree” is a lie. It’s not every search, but rather every couple clicks on an ad
    • They use Bing results making them useless

    If you’re using Ecosia with an adblocker or knowingly skip over sponsored results then you are NOT in any way contributing to the tree-planting

    • Star@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      351·
      10 months ago

      they don’t “plant trees” but rather contribute very little amounts to existing programmes

      Ofcourse they don’t plant trees themselves, it’s a search engine with a small team. They donate their entire profit which averages upwards of a million euros every month, to local tree planting initiatives across the world and that isn’t a ‘little’ number at all.

      “Every search plants a tree” is a lie. It’s not every search, but rather every couple clicks on an ad

      I agree, they were ‘a bit’ misleading with that in the past. Although they did state in their tree counter earlier and somewhere in their website/blog that it was roughly 45 searches (in Germany, depends on region) which raised enough money to plant a tree. They’ve since removed most, if not all of the misinformation.

      They use Bing results making them useless

      Since when does using Bing results make a search engine a ‘scam’? DuckDuckGo also uses Bing results, would you call that a scam as well? Ecosia uses Bing search results because it’s close to impossible to make an independent search engine which gives satisfactory results without the resources of a tech giant.

      • meseek #2982@lemmy.caEnglish
        114·
        10 months ago

        to local tree planting initiatives across the world

        Pick a lane. It can’t be both. Either they donate to local initiatives or global ones. Pick one.

        Also Ecosia is a not for profit company. They don’t hide that fact.

        • ClockworkOtter@lemmy.worldEnglish
          121·
          10 months ago

          I think local initiatives around the world would mean initiatives around the world which are specifically local, rather than large, multinational planting organisations.

    • joelimgu@lemmy.worldEnglish
      184·
      10 months ago

      But they are pretty clear about that. Also, how is that worse than Google or bing? It’s not a dream sure, but its a lot better than your money going to Google

      • nudny ekscentryk@szmer.infoEnglish
        95·
        10 months ago

        they are not “clear about that”. I can see they removed it now but for the longest time the main page had a banner saying “every search plants a tree” and also an actual counter which went up by one every time you made a search – which was misleading, because it wasn’t every “search”, because you would have to click on an ad, and it wasn’t “every”, because it took several clicks on an ad to actually contribute an equivalent of a tree

    • Sniatch@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      10 months ago

      Can I ask what search engine you would recommend that is not some kind of misleading or a scam

    • VodkaSolution @feddit.itEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      I think your second and third point are well known or at least easily conceivable, but where did you get your first point from? Plain curiosity

    • YungOnions@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      85·
      10 months ago

      I’d rather ‘little contribution’ than none at all. I’d rather ‘every couple of clicks’ than none at all. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the major alternatives.

  • uuhhhhmmmm@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    111·
    10 months ago

    They integrated AI chat which is using OpenAI technology. So they’re paying for ChatGPT API instead of spending this money on trees? And doesn’t running generative AI consume a lot of electricity?

    • hannes3120@feddit.deEnglish
      35·
      10 months ago

      Running AI doesn’t - training an AI is where the real power hungry stuff happens