2 Eco-Friendly Search Engines to Save the Planet

Are you one of those people who wants to help make a change but doesn’t know how? You can of course readily write a check to a charity of your choice. But with the hard economic times, many people are finding it hard to do just that and sometimes feel bad about not being able to contribute to worthwhile projects.

But don’t worry, there is an easier way to give help, specifically towards the good of the environment and other ecological pursuits. All you need to do is merely shift the way you do your Internet browsing. Instead of using Google or Yahoo, try the following alternative search engines the next time you want to look up something.

Just doing so gives you the chance to help raise funds for specific endeavors that you would not otherwise be aware of or contribute to. So start making the hours you spend online more productive.

Ecosia

Ecosia

Ecosia, the successor of Forestle, lets you save 0.1 square meters of rain forest in Northern Brazil per search. And with the number of times you do a search everyday, which on average is 1000 per year,  that amounts to 100 square meters! So invite your family and friends to do the same and help the World Wildlife Fund save this part of the Amazon forest. Ecosia is powered by Yahoo’s search technology so you can bet it is reliable and just as quick. So how does it work? When you do a search and happen to click a sponsored link, the company pays Yahoo a fee for that click.

Yahoo gives a large percentage of that to Ecosia. So far, through this search engine, 255, 210 British pounds have been raised and 10,319,493 square meters of the rain forest have been protected. So say a mantra every time you sit on the computer that you will save the rain forest and the many species that live on it and feel good about yourself.

Znout


Znout

Znout is the counterpart of Ecosia if Google is your cup of tea. Znout is an independent website based in Germany, stands for Zero Negative Output and focuses on helping you be carbon neutral. Why? Because a single google search consumes as much energy as an 11-watt light bulb in one hour. That is why 2 percent of global CO2 emissions comes from Information and communication technology and is bigger than the emissions caused by the aviation industry worldwide. I bet you didn’t know that.

What Znout does is buy renewable energy certificates every month to counterbalance the amount of emissions Znout makes every month including the amount used every time you use Znout as your search engine. It relies solely on advertisement revenue so why not click that ad once in a while. That means that if you feel helpless keeping green then you can now at least make your “searching” green. Znout has features to allow you to leave fewer carbon prints by allowing you to turn it’s background color to black, which saves you 30 percent energy.

4 thoughts on “2 Eco-Friendly Search Engines to Save the Planet”

  1. Hi,

    That’s an interesting idea, but… difficult to judge whether the companies above make sense. The real question is about the overall effectiveness of these companies in relation to Yahoo and Google. By using these search engines you are effectively taking money away from Google or Yahoo and giving it to these people, some of which is then transferred to charities. However, Google and Yahoo also give a part of their money to various charities. So the question is whether more money is given to charities through the “green” search engines or the regular ones…

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