Reforesting with Ecosia: How Small Contributions Can Do The Most Protective Environmental Action

It’s easy to fall into a downward spiral thinking about climate change these days. Many of us remember first learning about it in elementary school, when the teacher would herd us to the auditorium once a year because the school principal would invite a special speaker to tell us about global warming.  The speaker would tell us about how the Earth was sick, and how the environment was being destroyed by human recklessness, and that we were the only ones who could save it. The speaker would flip through a slideshow with a picture of two polar bears on one slide, huddled on a melting iceberg, and a seagull on another, with its neck stuck in a plastic six pack ring. Seeing a place stripped of it trees was always the saddest part. As kids we might’ve cared and just felt helpless about it. Some of what those guest speakers showed us might’ve struck a chord with us, and we would’ve signed up to collect litter with our parents for a couple odd weekends, or paid a little more attention to which bin we were throwing out our trash, at least for a little while. Most of the time, we felt like we were just kids, and that climate change is real and it’s bad, but it’s a grown-ups’ responsibility since they’re the ones driving the cars, then they’ll come up with a solution. Maybe it made us complacent, to hear the guest speaker each year and to see the documentary but to think that you can’t help it right now, because you’re children, so you’ll just put it in the back of your head for a while and worry about something else until the guest speaker comes around next year. Now looking back on it, as an adult, it can be pretty disheartening to think that the danger is just the same, years after the guest speaker got off the stage and left the auditorium.

Global warming is an issue that we’re probably all familiar with, and I’d wager that a lot of us probably think is serious. It’s a crisis we’ve been assured needs urgent attention, time and again, but when we flip on the news, we don’t see anybody worrying about it, and when we’re flipping through the channels or checking social media, we never seem to see anybody worrying about it. It’s as if everybody has put it in the back of their heads, waiting for the grown-ups to come up with the solution, only we drive the cars now. For us, average folk, we may be waiting for political action, a government that will take and relegate responsibility. I’m not sure who the government is waiting for, but I do know that 10 years have passed, before it’s occured to me that that complacent kid never grew up to take this responsibility.

Finding a way to contribute can be the hardest part. For a long time I deeply cared about protecting the forests and rainforests, but never knew how I could help, or what I could do. Until this year, I didn’t have a vote to give on ecological matters, and I didn’t know how to change my lifestyle to be more environmentally conservationist. I felt like in theory, protecting the environment was something of superb significance to me, but for a long time, I was still waiting to do anything about it. At some time I realized what worked for me. The best way I could shake off that complacency was by finding a practice I could stick with everyday. It didn’t have to be super involved, or a major contribution to the cause. Just a small lifestyle change that I could maintain in the long term and that could keep feeling engaged, interested in environmental action, and most importantly, rewarded for helping. I made that lifestyle change in smallest way imaginable. I changed my search engine.

I switched my computer’s search engine two years ago from the default chrome to a search tool called Ecosia. Ecosia is a search engine I learned about in high school whose whole premise is that every time you search using it, it will plant a tree in your name. What Ecosia really does is donate 80% of its income to reforesting conservationist groups across the globe from Brazil to Indonesia, who, in turn, actually plant a tree in your name. As you search, you see a little counter with a tree above it in the right hand corner go up telling you how many trees you’ve planted. Each time you open up the browser again, that number stays up there. The organization has planted slightly over 31 million trees since its creation, and has worked with the Great Green Wall Project in Burkina Faso, and The Nature Conservancy's “Plant A Billion Trees” Program in Brazil. It’s an easy way to feel like you’re making an impact by just doing what you would normally do. It’s very rewarding  stick with it and see that number reach 100 trees, and then 1,000.

As small and casual a part of my life it would be, using Ecosia would both peak my interest to learn more about deforestation, and also inspire me to make more lifestyle changes that would encourage sustainable living. Deforestation continues to be a major threat to the biodiversity of tropical ecosystems, especially in developing, tropical countries. Once a rainforest or jungle is cleared, the wildlife that existed within it cannot be rehabilitated and much of the diversity is permanently lost. Logging, agricultural expansion and livestock ranching are among the largest causes for deforestation. The natural resources from timber and the herding grounds for cattle come at a great cost, disrupting the water cycle in tropical rainforests and replacing Co2 absorbing forests with methane producing cattle farms. The way I see it, if on the one hand I would advocate reforestation, then I would have to curb my own environmental costs on the other. A second way I have tried to change my lifestyle is reduce how many paper products I use or throw away. By accumulating small changes one by one, I can gradually commit to the sustainable lifestyle I want to live.

To me reforestation is the most encouraging angle at looking at climate change. As a kid listening to guest speakers, nearly everything about global war and ecological change seemed irreversible once broken, and the solutions seemed less clear. Deforestation seemed like one problem that I could understand, that could clearly be fixed with replanting wildlife. As I grew older I realized how it couldn’t be fixed so easily, still once broken, an ecosystem can’t be repaired. But the idea of helping sow seeds in a developing country, however detached from me, has a certain hope to it while everything else feels desperate. Ecosia just conveniently connects users to encouraging organizations, but that motivation for environmental protection can come from anywhere. Whatever kind it  may be, I believe the key to effectively contributing to a ensuring a sustainable future is by committing to small changes and sticking with them.