Google is without a doubt the king of the search engines, receiving over 40,000 searches every second. Understandably, that may not be good news for the environment as it requires a substantial amount of power and resources.
While Google emphasize their green stance on the environment, such as hiring goats to mow the lawns at their California-based offices, there's a fairly new search engine that really gives credence to the phrase 'giving back to the environment' by donating at least 80% of its income to planting trees in Brazil.
Appropriately named Ecosia, this Berlin-based startup is a fully-fledged search engine that uses its own algorithm, with the option of using results from Google if you prefer.
In the corner of the page, there's a counter that informs users roughly how many trees they've helped plant, based simply on the number of searches they've performed.
The search engine itself is surprisingly easy to use, with a souped up Google-esque layout that is well-designed and its algorithm returns accurate results.
Ecosia is fully transparent with its donations and boasts an environmentally-friendly search process that neutralizes carbon emissions related to your search queries.
At the time of writing, Ecosia claims to have almost 2.5m active users, over 720,000 searches per day, and that they plant a new tree every 19 seconds. In total, they have planted almost 1.2m trees.
According to the counter, I've personally helped plant 6 trees with just a few curious search queries - so give it a try!