JB: We have planted around 31 million trees so far and at the moment we are planting about 1.7 million new trees every month. What results have you reached so far? How many trees have you planted and do you have any other plans for the future? In the future we could even try to influence politics and push people towards more sustainable lifestyles. These companies together with us can exchange ideas and maybe try to influence how other companies do business. It was good also because this allowed us to find other similar minded companies offering cool services and products. Back then, it was a way to prove to the outside world that we were – and still are – very transparent our business believes in sustainably we are treating employees fairly and making sure that everyone has a good work-life balance.īecoming a “B Corporation” meant having “an official stamp” because there was no “fair trade” or “organic certificate” for a web company like ours. JB: In 2014 we went through the process to become certified as a “B Corporation”, and we were actually the first “B Corporation” in Germany. You are classified in Germany as a B corporation, what does that mean and how does this influence your actions? We really hope that by proving that you can use part of your profits for actions that have a positive impact, we can maybe buy a few other companies to do something similar. One of our goals with this project is to inspire other companies to do something similar, because even if we should ever be able to plant 1 billion trees, it is still not enough and we’re not going to be able to address the issues of deforestation and climate change on our own. We always share our numbers with our users as we publish them on our website and everyone can see how much money we make, how much we spend to run Ecosia, and how much we spend on planting trees every month. We have about 7 million users at the moment which is a tiny fraction of the number of users Google has still that allows us to invest about half million dollars into tree planting every month. That is a pretty standardized system for search engines, the greatest difference is once we covered our running costs with this advertising revenues, we then use 100% percent of our profits to plant trees, to support reforestation, to help landscape restoration organizations all over the world. We show ads next to our regular search results and as soon as users click on one of those ads, we get paid for having directed a new customer to the advertisers’ page. JB: Ecosia works like any other search engine – Google, Bing, Yahoo – you might have come across. Photo Credit : EcosiaĬan you explain how Ecosia works? What goals are you trying to achieve? In the Photo: The Founder of Ecosia Christian Kroll planting new trees. It is our ambition and it is also something we want to happen. We do hope that in the future we will reach our goal to plant one billion trees it is possible but we need 1% of the global search market on Ecosia for that. Now we are a team of thirty-five people and we have financed the planting of more than 30 million trees in 16 different biodiversity hotspots all over the world.
For the first few years, Christian wasn’t really able to afford an office or to pay full-time team members, it was mainly him with few people helping out. This what Ecosia is today, but we are actually bigger than that. That was the turning point: he decided to use the profits generated from his soon to be launched search engine, to plant trees. He also understood it is possible to make positive impact by planting a large number of trees. He thought that with usual business models the money made from online ads would only be reinvested within the same company and would not benefit anyone externally.Īfter finishing his studies, Christian soon realized that one of the biggest threats to our planet is deforestation. He had in mind something more altruistic, supportive to a good cause, rather than just making profits. He came up with this idea in 2009: at that time, he was well aware that search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo make tons of money with online advertising and he wondered if that money could be used for something else. Jacey Bingler: The founder of Ecosia is Christian Kroll, an expert of business and tech. Who are the founders of Ecosia and what is the story of this company?
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