Innovation

Ecosia is a German company founded in 2009 by Christian Kroll. It is a search engine that plants trees. Even if Ecosia takes action all over the world, they focus their actions in four main countries: Madagascar, Burkina Faso, Peru and Indonesia. The search engine generates money thanks to the advertising. his money is then redistributed to charities following a 80%-20% ratio, meaning that the company gives around 80% of its turnover and keeps the remaining 20% in order to pay its employees and invest in future projects. In order to do so, they have a strict management of marketing campaigns and they have neither shareholders nor stakeholders.

Inspiration

Christian Kroll who is the founder and CEO of Ecosia decided to travel around the world after he got his college degree. During that trip, he saw the devastation and deforestation of the world. Also, there is a lot more poverty than he anticipated. Christian realized he wanted to engage himself in forest preservation to help the environment. Then, he learned a lot about the link between globalization, climate change and how planting new trees could neutralize CO2 emissions on a big scale. After that, he came up with the idea of a search engine that helps to finance planting trees and restoration projects. At the end of 2009, the idea for Ecosia was born and the tree planting search engine was launched in December of that year.

Overall impact

Each time the users use Ecosia to search for information, a relative number of trees will be planted. Those will be planted in less eco-friendly areas. And this method of planting trees subverts people's perception of charitable activities. At the same time, the search engine makes people's online behavior more meaningful to the environment. More precisely, Ecosia is gradually raising the people’s attention to sustainable development or the global environment. As a result, this kind of innovation is not only just for the benefit but also demonstrating a positive attitude towards the planet's sustainable development.

Business benefit

Ecosia has known a great deal of difficulties when the company was launched but since 2012, the company has been in good health. Their number of users is constantly growing and so their turnover is increasing. Thus it is planned to hire about six more people before the end of 2018. Also, from the interview we know that all the employees are really grateful about their job. They feel like they are actually contributing to make some changes and they are happy about their boss.

Ecosia was the first company in Germany to have the B-certificate, which insures the involvement of the company in sustainable actions. That allows the company to gain real credibility and it gave it more visibility.

Social and environmental benefit

Ecosia chooses to plant its trees where they will have the most impact on the land but also on the local population. Planting trees allows the earth to be more fertile and protect it against erosion. The fertility of the earth allows the locals, whose entire food and revenue rely on their own fields, to grow more plantation. Therefore, they have access to more food, but also, they have more product to sell. That can grant help them save more money and as a result that can help them access education, healthcare and so on.

As stated before trees have effects on soils but they also are important for the air and the water circulation. Trees allow purifying the air. They produce oxygen, but they also absorb some of the polluting gas that is in the atmosphere. That participates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and therefore participates in reducing the hole in the ozone layer.
Moreover, trees help regulates the cycle of water. It significantly impacts on the risk of flooding but also on the dryness of the ground.

Interview

Louise Ann Borecki, US Country Manager