Following a campaign from our students, as a College we have made the switch to make Ecosia the default search engine in our PC labs and on our loan laptops.
Ecosia is a ‘carbon-negative’ search engine that aims to be a greener alternative to search engines like Google and Bing. Ecosia use 80% of their profits to fund the planting of trees across the world. Since its inception in 2009, more than 113 million trees have been planted by Ecosia.
By making the switch to Ecosia, Royal Holloway is the tenth university in the world to formally set Ecosia as our default. More than 1,200 computers on campus now suggest Ecosia as standard.
By using Ecosia, we are able to support sustainability goals, and support the planting of trees in ‘biodiversity hotspots’ across the globe.
The CO2 footprint of an internet search has been estimated at 0.2g. Ecosia tries to reduce this by building their own solar plants to power all searches using the engine, as well as planting trees and offsetting energy use with renewables.
Rhiannon Morey, who set up the initiative to bring Ecosia to campus, said “When I set up this campaign a year ago, I hoped to make a lasting change on campus, but I never expected to achieve this so soon! Ecosia is the most caring company that I have come across, with an impact reaching far beyond just the environment, supporting communities and livelihoods worldwide.”
We will be tracking the number of trees our searches have helped plant on the IT intranet pages. You can help by setting your own browser(s)’ search engine to default to Ecosia. If you do this by visiting https://ecosia.co/RoyalHolloway, your searches will add to our total of trees planted.
Find out more about our switch Ecosia by visiting the campaign’s Facebook page.