FAU uses Ecosia
The Green Office is committed to promoting and expanding the use of the search engine Ecosia in the FAU network. The environmentally-friendly search engine searches efficiently by minimizing data transfer and also plants trees – indirectly. Ecosia has already planted over 152 million trees in over 30 countries to restore degraded land and support local communities. The company uses the principle of search engine advertising and reinvests its profits from advertisements in projects for reforestation all over the world (see here). It works with regional partners and development organizations such as World Vision. According to Ecosia, an average of 45 searches are enough to plant a new tree. That doesn’t sound like much at first, but it adds up quickly. Christian Kroll, founder and managing director of Ecosia, is a former student of FAU and moved to Nuremberg in 2003, where he studied business administration. In the course of a longer trip around the world, he was sensitized to the extent of the environmental challenges that climate change and ongoing environmental destruction entail, and came up with the idea of developing a search engine that plants trees. You can read the full interview of our press office with FAU alumnus Christian Kroll here.
Ecosia also claims to promote sustainable action. When searching for travel routes, for example, the search engine displays climate-friendly train routes at the top of the list and offers alternatives to air travel. Ecosia is also climate-neutral and uses solar energy to power its servers, generating twice as much energy as it needs. It almost quadrupled its investment in solar power in March 2022. As far as privacy is concerned, using Ecosia has numerous benefits over many providers. According to its own information, search queries are not stored permanently, nor are user data shared with advertisers on the basis of search queries. Requests are also securely encrypted and users can disable all tracking. Detailed information on data protection and privacy can be found here.
As a B-certified corporation and self-owned company, Ecosia is transparent in all matters and makes its financial reports available to everyone every 6 weeks after the end of the month. In November 2020, for example, Ecosia used 40% of its revenues for tree planting projects and 10% for green investments. The remaining expenses were spread over operating expenses, taxes and marketing. Together with FAU on Ecosia, a campaign launched by students, the Green Office supports the use of Ecosia at FAU. We are committed to ensuring that Ecosia is available as an option on all FAU computers and as a default search engine on as many as possible. Several thousand trees could be planted every month using the search queries of our students and employees. If you would like to support “FAU on Ecosia” and promote use of the search engine, please contact us either directly via email (fau_on_ecosia@posteo.de) or via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/FAUonEcosia/). Via the link https://ecosia.co/FAU, you can download “FAU on Ecosia” on your own computer and assign the searches made to the FAU’s own tree counter. By the end of February 2023, about 134,400 searches had funded over 3,000 trees. 