Ecosia: A search engine that helps save the rain forest

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A new search engine called Ecosia claims that users will save 2 square meters of rain forest every time they submit a search.

Ecosia founder Christian Kroll says the company’s servers run on green electricity and 80% of income from the site’s sponsored links will be donated to the World Wide Fund for Nature. Yahoo and Bing are providing Ecosia with search results and sponsored links.

‘I think that by combining Yahoo and Bing we can keep up with Google,’ said Kroll, 26.

Kroll, who is from Germany, founded another environmentally focused search engine called Forestle in 2008. Forestle was popular in Germany, Kroll said, but it didn’t attract the attention of international markets.

‘I wanted to make the idea available to the world,’ Kroll said. ‘That’s why I founded Ecosia.’

World Wide Fund for Nature said in a press release, ‘An average Internet user can protect about 2,000 square meters of rainforest every year by using Ecosia -- this is about the size of an ice hockey field. If only 1% of global Internet users accessed Ecosia for their Web searches, we could save a rain forest area as big as Switzerland each year.’

The search site officially launches Dec. 7, the day of the World Climate Summit in Copenhagen, though it is up and running now.

-- Melissa Rohlin