ECOSIA​, the eco-friendly search engine that uses its advertising revenues to plant trees in areas affected by deforestation, has planted the 100-millionth tree in its campaign to restore devastated forests and woodlands across the world.

Ecosia’s tree-planting mission is entirely supported by the advertising revenue generated from searches conducted by its 15 million users globally – including around 1.5 million across the UK. As knowledge of the climate crisis has risen in recent years, ​Ecosia’s popularity has also climbed with usership of the search engine in the UK increasing by over 140 per cent in 2019.

Its mammoth tree-planting milestone has been reached despite the collapse of online advertising revenues due to the COVID-19 health crisis. Ecosia’s revenues in May were over 1 million euros lower than in February, at the start of the pandemic. Despite that, Ecosia has continued to grow its global user-base, with 25 per cent more users in June 2020 compared to June 2019. The search engine even saw record search volumes in the last week of April, at the height of the lockdown, up by 73 per cent year-on-year.

Whilst Ecosia’s long-term future is safe, more can be done to increase tree planting in the short to medium term. Ecosia is therefore calling on members of the public to start using its search engine more often, and associated products like ​Ecosia Travel​.

Christian Kroll, CEO of ​Ecosia, said: “I am really proud of what we have achieved so far, thanks to our passionate users. But we can’t stop here! I hope more people will now make the switch to Ecosia and help us plant billions more trees.”

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