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Ecosia plants 200 million trees (blog.ecosia.org)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Can we... see them?

Edit: some quick math, the minimum recommended space between trees is 3m, 200 million of those is 600km² / 148k ac , which would make the space required bigger than 17 countries (larger than Andorra but very slightly smaller than Saint Lucia). They have a blog with their tree planting updates but I wish there were more photos.

[–] LibreFish 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The big turning point came in 2018 when I signed a legally binding commitment to ensure that Ecosia could never be sold and that 100% of our profits would always go to the planet. Today, your searches enable us to work with partners to plant and protect 1,250 species of trees across 95,000 locations globally.

Keywords plant and protect. Basically a papermill can plant trees to harvest 20 years later and in the meantime sell carbon offsets for 19 years then harvest and replant.

Can't say for sure they're doing it, but from what I hear just about every tree is eligible for a "carbon offset" and some companies abuse it by saying "this is our tree" as long as it's not cut down within x months and use it as a carbon offset or a "protected tree."

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ecosia doesn't sell carbon credits though.

[–] LibreFish 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They might buy them though to inflate the number of protected trees. I'm not saying they are, just providing a potential reason for such a large number

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

My understanding from reading their posts is that the counter only counts planted trees. Other things like building solar panels and fight deforestation are not even counted like that. That's why they said they are phasing out the individual tree counter, because it doesn't account for all those other things.