3 Green Search Engines

I recently found out about a few green search engines that I thought were worth a share here on Planetsave.

1) Ecosia is basically a normal search engine “backed by Yahoo, Bing and the World Wide Fund For Nature.” The unique feature of this otherwise normal search engine is that it “gives at least 80% of its advertising revenue to a rainforest protection program run by the World Wide Fund For Nature.”

As the homepage says, “Each web search saves about 2 m² of rainforest for free. We already protected 212,427,346 m².”

In addition, “all Ecosia servers run on green electricity, so they do not cause any CO2 emissions.”

You can easily use Ecosia for your searches by going to the homepage (link above) or by adding the Ecosia search box onto your browser.  “Once you have installed Ecosia, you can also see how much rainforest you have already saved.”

This looks like a great search engine option and I know I will be using it now (I just followed the easy steps for installing it on my Chrome browser and have made it my default search engine).

2) LeapLightly is another green search engine, but it has more options than broad web searches. In fact, when you visit the home page, your only search option is for green products (I assume this is how it makes money). Once you search for something, however, you will see other search options in the top-right corner of the page. You can search the web in general, search events, or search green blogs. (Yes, Planetsave and other Important Media blogs are included in its green blogs directory).

This is another good option for general green searches, but seems most useful if you want to search for green products or want to search through green blogs or events.

3) ecofreek isn’t really a normal, general search engine, but I thought I’d include it in this post. On ecofreek, you can search for free and swappable items across numerous sources (only). One green living option is to refrain from buying goods, so easier ways to find free, used goods or swap goods help green the world. Next time you need something for your home, for a gift, or for yourself, check out ecofreek and see if you can get it free or can swap something for it.

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Image Credit: screenshot of Ecosia homepage