We interview Jacey Bingler of Ecosia on this episode of Invention Stories on YouTube.
Ecosia is a search engine that helps people find information, comparable to Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Ecosia differs in that it devotes the majority of its income to tree planting. This episode was first shared as an audio-only Episode 51 of the Invention Stories Podcast back on May 3, 2018.
Christian Kroll, Founder of Ecosia.org
Christian Kroll is a Berlin-based entrepreneur who was born on December 5, 1983. Ecosia.org, the world’s largest environmentally conscious search engine, was founded and is run by Christian Kroll. They invests the proceeds from user searches in tree planting in locations where they are most needed. Christian Kroll founded the tree-planting company Ecosia, which is the world’s largest non-profit search engine and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. By September 2020, the B Corporation-accredited search engine company has planted around 100 million trees across 19 forestry sites across the world. By the end of the year, the firm hopes to have planted 1 billion trees.
Ecosia
As a result, Ecosia’s search results are powered by Bing in addition to Ecosia’s own search algorithms. Ecosia is a search engine that includes advertisements in its search results and is paid by Bing (their partner) for each click on a sponsored link that directs users to their advertisers. The quantity of money earned from advertisements varies depending on the level of competition for the term and the value of the advertised product.
According to Ecosia, the average cost of a search is half a Euro cent (0.005 EUR). Furthermore, it takes 45 searches on average to fund the planting of a single tree. Ecosia also ensures that there are measures in place to detect and invalidate fake and random advertisement clicks. The total number of trees we have planted is displayed below the search box.
Ecosia also raises revenue through its second product, EcoLinks, a Browser Extension that allows users to donate to Ecosia while shopping online. When a consumer visits an online retailer via an EcoLink and purchases any service or product, the online store owner pays Ecosia a commission (typically between 2 and 10%). As of July 2016, they offers country-based country filtering but not the presentation of global data.
The Adventures of Ecosia
In September 2009, Ecosia received $21,500 in seed funding, and the search engine launched on December 7, 2009, just in time for the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen. Ecosia has helped with a variety of tree-planting projects. The funds from Ecosia went to a World Wide Fund for Nature program in Germany that protected the Juruena National Park in the Amazon basin until December 2010. To ensure that the protection was maintained, Ecosia designed and supported programs involving local communities and wood companies.
From December 2009 to August 2013, Ecosia contributed to the Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion Trees campaign. This project aims to plant one billion native trees in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest by 2015. By 2011, Ecosia had raised almost €250,000. By 2013, approximately 200,000 people had used Ecosia, and 116,000 seedlings had been supported thanks to donations.
Jacey Bingler at Ecosia
Jun 2015 – Present Berlin Area, Germany
Working at Ecosia allows me to support a cause I am passionate about by doing something I love: reaching out to people to find ways to cooperate. Most Importantly, Ecosia is a search engine that donates 80% of its profits from ad revenue to tree planting. So this allows users to contribute to the environment without having to spend a penny, simply by searching the web.
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