@OP Wanted to know whose search result you use. I mean whose search data it is. I dont think you guys might have built a whole search engine for this? (Just curious)
Nice project by the way.
Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees
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Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees
#62Ecosia claims to respect the Do Not Track header. Even for users who don't use DNT, Ecosia offers a stronger privacy policy than Bing (which supplies the search results).
> If you want to opt out of tracking, you can activate “Do Not Track” in your browser’s settings.
> We don’t create personal profiles of you based on your search history. We actually anonymize all searches within one week.
> We don’t sell your data or your searches to advertising companies.
https://info.ecosia.org/privacy
https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206153381-Where...
Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees
#63The big question here is "what trees?" If Ecosia are planting Acacia in Spain, as seen in their map, this is wrong. Wattle is invasive in southern Europe. Some are even in the catalogue of forbidden by law species. They displace native species and are a big problem in Portugal after fire forests for example. Some species are also poisonous to cattle and wild animals Please, left conservation efforts to professionals.…
They're behind efforts to preserve existing forest as well "Hambach forest from coal mining"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/09/berlin-startup...
Also, I'm not sure it's fair to lump them in with well-meaning but ignorant weekend arborist.
Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees
#64Who owns the land you're planting on?. How can you guarantee it won't be used in the future? Companies that cause pollution should also pay a tax to repair it. This should be enforced at a government level. Maybe by UN? seeing as the environment is something countries share despite their political ideologies. It's sad we can't hold governments more accountable for false promises. I remember all the g8 summits 10+ yea…
I linked this a different comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ld0EDDQZg4& This is our tree planting officer explaining (among other things) how he tries to make sure we plant in the right places (and that includes land ownership questions and how to make sure the tress will still be around in a few years). As for energy consumption, we do offset the CO2 emissions that are associated with searching on Ecosia by…
Thanks for sharing. I’m curious to know how we would align our company to a social initiative such as this and would be curious to know if other things are sacrificed to have a decent amount of profit to pay for tree-planting?
Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees
#65@OP Wanted to know whose search result you use. I mean whose search data it is. I dont think you guys might have built a whole search engine for this? (Just curious) Nice project by the way.
Both search and ads are from Bing.
Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees
#66I was working at Ecosia in 2014, the position on my CV that makes me the most proud. Super happy that they showed up here (again). And 50M+ trees now, just amazing.
I only started at Ecosia in 2016, but I feel you. Not sure if this is appreciated on HN (I only saw a guideline about posts, not comments), but if this piqued someone's interest, we have a bunch of open positions at the moment: https://ecosia.workable.com/
Are there any resources to find companies that give back their profits to society, especially to environment?
Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees
#67Ecosia claims to respect the Do Not Track header. Even for users who don't use DNT, Ecosia offers a stronger privacy policy than Bing (which supplies the search results). > If you want to opt out of tracking, you can activate “Do Not Track” in your browser’s settings. > We don’t create personal profiles of you based on your search history. We actually anonymize all searches within one week. > We don’t sell your data…
I quite like the idea of allowing advertisers to create profiles, but only with one week of data. I would support that as a regulatory constraint. You might get the same basic results analytically, but it feels less invasive to know that if I don’t want something to be known, it’ll be gone in a week.
Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees
#68I was investigating massive reforestation as a means of reducing greenhouse gases a few days ago. I stumbled upon this hyper-dense technique called the Miyawaki method [1]. Sounds like it's resource-intensive upfront but might be self-sustaining after that. The guy mentioned in [1] has open-sourced the methodology here [2]. [1]: https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-real... [2]: https://www.afforest…
Reducing the amount of land we use is one of the best ways to restore our ecosystems and combat climate change. As we engineer better crops with higher yields we should use less land, and as we develop vertical farming we should use even less. I would like to see government buyback programs for farms and reforestation on those properties in the future. In the US states like Ohio, Indiana, and other midwestern states were heavily deforested for agriculture in the past.
Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees
#69Wow, this is one of the better attempts to monetize an environmentalists' identity. This could literally be a wrapper around bing/google, very little investment. Build out the tree-planting department as you scale income, without having to solve the hard technical problems at all. Kudos to them! This should be an inspirational example whenever people talk about starting a tech company on minimal code. (Their commitme…
It wraps bing. This is the 2nd time I've come across Ecosia, today I added the add-on to Firefox. Here's to hoping they actually plant the trees!
Seems they are a certified B-corp (just looked it up, seems legit).
Here is another reference: https://info.ecosia.org/about they have a pretty sizable team. Pretty cool!
Re: Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees
#70I think this is a great idea.
However, when I see forestry companies planting trees, they tend to only plant trees that are economically valuable to them. What results are forests with very low biodiversity because these companies have only planted a single type of tree.
How do you ensure that the trees you plant contribute to the health and biodiversity of the forests they are planted in?