Ecosia - The sustainable search engine at the UR

We are now surfing with less CO₂ on campus.

In cooperation with the Computer Center (external link, opens in a new window) and the Student Speakers' Council (AStA (external link, opens in a new window)), we switched to the more sustainable standard search engine Ecosia (external link, opens in a new window) in all CIP-Pools at the university. Simple search queries are used to finance climate protection projects worldwide in the form of tree planting.

Brief description of the project

What is the goal? More sustainable surfing across campus!

How does it work? Via the Ecosia link for the UR (external link, opens in a new window) (https://ecosia.co/ur), Ecosia can be quickly and easily installed as the default search engine on your work or private computer.

Background: Ecosia is already the standard search engine at 17 universities worldwide. And now the University of Regensburg is joining in. Worldwide, students' internet searches have already financed more than 223,000 trees.

??Important: To keep track of the trees planted together, you need to install Ecosia via this link (external link, opens in a new window) (delete your old version if necessary)??

This is how many trees we have already planted through Ecosia

Trees 32,645
Search queries 1,632,290
Planted area in football pitches 35
Days worth of fresh o2 created by trees 353,168

But why all the effort? What makes Ecosia so environmentally friendly?

Like all other search engines, Ecosia also earns money by placing adverts. The main difference to other popular providers is that Ecosia is a non-profit organisation, 100% of whose surplus revenue goes towards climate protection measures. A large part of the profit is invested directly in reforestation projects (external link, opens in a new window). It takes around 45 search queries to finance one tree planting. The finances are transparently logged over the years and can be viewed on the website. In addition, user data is not shared with advertisers, search queries are permanently stored, and the company's servers run on solar energy.

Ecosia has already planted over 140 million trees through 60 projects in more than 30 countries. To achieve this, they work together with local smallholders and organisations. In Indonesia, for example, they are supporting the switch to more sustainable cultivation methods and the alternative planting of former palm oil plantations. The partners are paid monthly for reforestation, natural regeneration, and firefighting, and also help to reduce global CO₂ levels, make soils fertile again, achieve higher yields, and secure water supplies. The projects are clearly documented on their website.

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