If you care about the world, you surely want to stop climate change and deforestation. But what can one single individual even do? Plant Trees! Let’s talk about two companies that plant trees on your behalf at no extra cost to you.
#1 – Ecosia: Plant Trees With Your Online Searches
Well, how about planting trees with your online searches?
Yes, it’s as simple as it sounds. Ecosia is the search engine that plants trees with the money they earn from your search results.
How Does Ecosia Work?
Search engines show you links for your searches, and make money by including some ads, whenever there are companies that would like to ‘sponsor’ some results.
This model is the same whether it’s Google, Bing, or any other search engine. These companies make money by showing you ads.
Ecosia is different because it uses that ad-generated money to plant trees. It is a social business, so it does not accumulate profits or redistribute gains to its shareholders, it just plants trees with the earnings.
How Good Are Ecosia’s Search Results?
Ecosia’s search engine is powered by Microsoft’s Bing (just like Yahoo), and their results are generally almost as good as Google.
In case you want to use google for a specific search, just include #g in front of your search, and you’ll use Google directly from Ecosia, instead of Bing.
How To Start Using Ecosia?
The easiest way is to just go to Ecosia.org and start searching.
But ideally, you can install the official Ecosia Chrome extension that helps you always use Ecosia instead of Google directly from the window navigation bar.
Remember that you can easily still use Google for specific searches by including #g in front of your search (for example ‘#g cheap flights to Barcelona’).
# 2 – Amazon Smile: Donate 0.5% Of Your Amazon Bill
We all know Amazon, but have you ever heard of Amazon Smile?
Amazon Smile is just like Amazon (it is Amazon), with the only difference that when you make a purchase, it donates 0.5% of the sales amount to the registered charity of your choice. Sounds great, right?
Thus, you can choose an organization that plants trees such as One Tree Planted Inc, and then you’ll be planting trees with each purchase you make, at no extra cost to you. It’s not limited to tree-planting, you can choose other amazing NGOs such as Khan Academy.
If you’re thinking that 0.5% is not much, think again! Amazon Smile has generated over USD $346 million since November 2021. That’s a lot!
One Tree Planted is well-known for promising to plant one tree for every dollar donated. Think about all the trees we could plant if all the money on Amazon Smile was to be spent on planting trees!
This article is an expression of gratitude towards companies like Ecosia and Amazon, that try to change the world for the better. I know many people hate Amazon, but it’s not all that bad; Amazon Smile is a clearly good initiative.
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For this reason, I am trying to help the cause by sharing this. And so should you! Please help by re-sharing and further spreading the word about Ecosia and Amazon Smile.
Let’s plant trees together!