Plant trees while you search the web • Hacker News Board

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#51

Post by cglace » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

switchbak wrote: post #46

jordigh wrote: post #30

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.

One also needs to be wary of tree planting as being necessarily altruistic. Nothing wrong with planting a tree of course, but many times they're planting a monoculture of financially viable & fast growing trees with the intent to log them in the future. The forestry industry views forests as large scale gardening, and they spend big bucks to plant trees after they log an area. In many cases I think our good will is b…

I believe they are donating the money to organizations that plant diverse native trees.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#52

Post by PavlovsCat » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

Hoasi wrote: post #20

WA wrote: post #14

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 th…

> 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.

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

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#53

Post by elektor » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

https://blog.ecosia.org/content/images/2019/06/Financial-Rep...

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

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#54

Post by TylerE » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

WA wrote: post #32

_eigenfoo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't click on ads, or have an Adblocker installed, you generate no money for Ecosia. Thus, no trees get planted. Do you have a source/reference for this?

Sure, here you go: https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206019452-How-d... Like any other search engine, Ecosia earns money from clicks on the advertisements that appear above and beside the search results. The advertisements on Ecosia are clearly labeled as Ads and are text links to websites that pay for each click by users. The ads are delivered to you by our partner Bing, who pays Ecosia a share of the rev…

Somehow the math doesn't add up for me.

If these numbers are to be believed, planting a tree costs maybe 50 cents, max. I am....skeptical.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#55

Post by bad-joke » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:09 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #43

jordigh wrote: post #30

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.

> 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.

> 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.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#56

Post by WA » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #54

WA wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, here you go: https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206019452-How-d... Like any other search engine, Ecosia earns money from clicks on the advertisements that appear above and beside the search results. The advertisements on Ecosia are clearly labeled as Ads and are text links to websites that pay for each click by users. The ads are delivered to you by our partner Bing, who pays Ecosia a share of the rev…

Somehow the math doesn't add up for me. If these numbers are to be believed, planting a tree costs maybe 50 cents, max. I am....skeptical.

From the FAQ:

> It costs our tree planting partners about 0.22 EUR to plant a tree. 22 cents divided by 0.5 cents makes about 45 searches until we can plant one new tree.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#57

Post by WA » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

arbuge wrote: post #38

_eigenfoo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for pointing this out! This changes how I think about Ecosia. EDIT: grammar

Out of curiosity, how else were you thinking a search engine would be making money?

Maybe by impressions only. But I think these days are long gone.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#58

Post by pier25 » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

bad-joke wrote: post #55

pier25 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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…

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.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#59

Post by rawrmaan » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

void_nill wrote: post #39

I just tried to use the search engine without Javascript and that's a really bad result. [1] [1] https://imgur.com/a/ybtiAkk

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

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#60

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

WA wrote: post #14

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 th…

[deleted]