7 September 2017
By Bryan Smyth
bryan@TheCork.ie
The Green Party in Cork has celebrated the success in University College Cork of Ecosia, the tree-planting internet search engine. The party is encouraging students starting the new academic year, as well as the general public, to continue to use the service.
Ecosia is a search engine that plants trees with the money it makes every time someone uses it. In February, Justin Fleming, a UCC student and the party’s representative in the Cork City South Central ward, led a successful campaign to make UCC the first university the UK and Ireland to install Ecosia on its computers.
Speaking about the success of the initiative, Mr Fleming said:
“The new academic year is due to start next week and a new generation of students will start using Ecosia. When we started the campaign in UCC last February, Ecosia had planted six million trees worldwide. Since then they have more than doubled that. Thanks to people using the search engine, they have planted thirteen million trees in all. This is good news for climate action, water security and reversing desertification in the global south. The students and staff of UCC can be proud of the part they have played in that achievement.”
Ecosia is a German non-profit founded in 2009, which donates 80% of its surplus income to environmental conservation. The company plans to plant one billion trees by 2020 based on the revenue from its search engine.
