Problem:

Reforestation costs money.

Solution:

With the 50th anniversary of Earth Day fast approaching in 2020, Earth Day Network is launching a series of major campaigns to catalyze and channel global collaboration for the health of our planet, Trees for the Earth was the first of these campaigns.

Launched in 2016, its goal is to plant 7.8 billion trees worldwide by 2021, one for every person projected to be on Earth. This could cut carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by up to 25 %, to levels last seen almost a century ago.

Ecosia, a popular internet search engine has brought in enough revenues to enable it to plant 70 million trees. This equates to the removal of 2.5 million tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere.

The search engine is planting a tree every second in Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, Spain, Tanzania, Madagascar, Colombia, Peru, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Morocco, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana and Nicaragua with the profits it makes from advertisements on its search engine.

Ecosia has partnered with Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, to get results for users, but receives a majority portion of any revenues. After covering its internal costs, everything left goes towards planting trees; Ecosia, founded by Christian Kroll, is a non-profit organization.

The startup, which began operations in 2009, has grown exponentially, with people using Ecosia in 183 countries, but particularly in its home country of Germany. As consumer concern about climate change increases, the company is on track to reach 100 million trees planted by the end of 2019, thanks to its users. It is targeting planting one trillion trees, costing equivalent to 10% of the world’s annual military spending.

What you can do:

Discover Solution 303: Selective fishing net

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