Sussex students turn search engine hits into trees
Three campaigning students from the University of Sussex, have helped Sussex become the most active university in the world to use an environmentally-friendly search engine.
Fred Henderson, Amber Hayward and Erin Emirali have been tirelessly promoting the use of Ecosia – a German-based Internet search engine that gives 80% of its profits from advertising revenue to reforestation and conservationism projects.
Whilst working on a course project together they discovered they all used Ecosia and began thinking about how they could help encourage more students to use it.
The trios official campaign, Ecosia on Campus has resulted in the planting of more than 8,000 trees, as well as helping Ecosia become the default search engine option for many Sussex students and staff. The Sussex students have encouraged and assisted students at more than 60 universities worldwide to start up their own campaigns to promote the use of the search engine, leading to thousands more trees being planted.
Launched in 2009, Ecosia has been responsible for the planting of more than 56 million trees (and counting) in over 15 countries around the world. In 2017, the company built a solar energy plant to ensure that their servers will always be run on 100% renewable energy. Their website continues to grow in popularity, with the rate of searches doubling in the past year alone.
Over the last year, University of Sussex students have carried out more than 600,000 searches using the site. As well as this resulting in the planting of more than 8,000 trees, they’ve contributed to more than 500 tonnes of CO2 being removed from the atmosphere.