BBC Weekly “The Boss” series talks to the Ecosia Boss

[Pesala]

The search engine boss who wants to help us plant trees

The BBC's weekly The Boss series profiles different business leaders from around the world. This week we speak to Christian Kroll, the founder and chief executive of internet search engine Ecosia.
Christian Kroll wants nothing less than to change the world.
"I want to make the world a greener, better place," he says.

[Pesala]

I didn't realise that Ad-blocking was enabled on Ecosia searches. I just turned it off. Is it off by default?

[greybeard]

Tracker Blocking seems enabled on my system. I don't think I've ever touched anything for Ecosia.
A bit disappointed that it makes you do a 'Captcha' after so many pages of search...

[Pesala]

@greybeard The default for Ecosia on 3.2 Stable is no Blocking. The default search engine is Bing.

[luetage]

While I understand the business model of Ecosia, I don’t understand how it makes a difference. It’s donating money to tree planting charities, but how do these charities operate? It’s not at all clear that any of these is working sustainable. If each tree planting charity doesn’t own the land they are planting on, the trees can just be chopped or burned down anytime in the future. These trees need to grow 20 to 30 years to make any impact and then they need to last. Who can ensure that?

[Pesala]

I trust the people behind Ecosia to support those projects that engage the local population. When the local communities benefit, they will protect the trees that they planted. Read some the Ecosia Blog articles.

Not all tree planting is equal: how to get tree planting right

Planting trees protects the future of our planet – provided it’s done in the right way. Otherwise it can actually make the climate crisis worse. Planting monocultures instead of mixed forests leads to ecological dead zones – and certainly doesn’t offset emissions. Non-native species and invasive tree species destroy biodiversity. And without the buy-in and support of local communities, trees don’t survive for long.

[luetage]

@Pesala Yeah, and 20 years later the local community decides what it really needs is a new highway, or sells the land to a company which promises to build infrastructure and generate jobs, this very community so dire needs.
All of this is obviously out of Ecosia’s hands, and still…

[LonM]

@luetage A tree that only grows for a few years is still an improvement over no trees at all.

Over those few years that tree will absorb some carbon dioxoide from the air, and will keep this carbon stored even if it is cut down (assuming it isn't burned).

[Komposten]

@luetage said in BBC Weekly “The Boss” series talks to the Ecosia Boss:

While I understand the business model of Ecosia, I don’t understand how it makes a difference. It’s donating money to tree planting charities, but how do these charities operate? It’s not at all clear that any of these is working sustainable. If each tree planting charity doesn’t own the land they are planting on, the trees can just be chopped or burned down anytime in the future. These trees need to grow 20 to 30 years to make any impact and then they need to last. Who can ensure that?

I'm fairly certain that I've read a blog post from Ecosia where they bring this up and how they work to future-proof their projects (to the extent possible). Unfortunately, I don't know how long ago I read that and there are many, many posts on their blog to sift through to find it...

[Pesala]

@Komposten The CEO answers that question in this video. They only count trees that survive for at least 3 years, not just seedlings planted, and they try to ensure that the trees are useful to locals so that they will look after them.

Note that Christian seems to be fluent in multiple languages: German, French, Spanish, English ...

[stardepp]

Also, here in this blog post, Ecosia explains how the trees are protected for the long term.

https://blog.ecosia.org/how-do-ecosia-trees-survive-cut-down/

[Pesala]

Is everyone getting tree planting wrong?

[stardepp]

Because nature and environmental protection are important to me, I use Ecosia as my standard search in Vivaldi

[luetage]

lol
Well make sure you disable adblocking and click the adverts, or no trees will be planted from your browsing.

[greybeard]

@Pesala I'm on the latest Snapshot 3.3.2022.6.

[samirf]

@pesala If you liked ecosia you might also like using refoorest.com/en which is a web plugin you can add to your web browser (google, bing, ecosia...) it lets you plant a tree every time you visit one of their partners’ website and it’s totally free

[Pesala]

@samirf I almost never use Google or Bing, and Ecosia is my default search engine, so there is no point adding an unknown plugin, which may not protect my privacy as well as Ecosia.

Unless you really need an extension, be wary of adding it.