Did you know planting trees is a search away from your gadget? This search engine funds global tree-planting projects with its ad revenue and "uses 100 percent of its profits for the planet." 

Ecosia, dubbed as “environmental Google,” has conducted over 20 tree-planting initiatives in 15 countries and partners with local groups to monitor the trees on-site. 

The countries mentioned in its projects are as follows: Peru, Brazil, Madagascar, Nicaragua, Haiti, Colombia, Spain, Morocco, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Indonesia.

In a recent Facebook post, the organization shared an update on a portion of the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil it helped reforest and protect eight years ago, which now houses 50,000 trees. It mentioned it is a crucial ecosystem although less known than the Amazon. 

Over the years, it also said the area has been cleared for cattle grazing (livestock freely eating grass in open fields, harming soil quality) and monocultures (growth of only one type of crop, leading to a lack of biodiversity). 

“We need to plant billions more trees. If we don’t do it, we won’t be able to stop climate change, but fortunately, it’s something very concrete that we can already get started on,” said Ecosia CEO Christian Kroll. 

Ecosia allows individuals to contribute to tree-planting projects without exerting monumental efforts. Now more than ever, we need to plant trees and, most of all, protect and preserve with urgency the forests we have now. It’s important to remember primary forests take thousands of years before they get “restored.”