![]() That's why we're also putting money into that.Ĭan you say more about the company’s focus on privacy and transparency? There are millions and billions of trees being burned down and with actually rather little money you can, in some areas, prevent those kinds of fires. Especially with the wildfires we're seeing now, it's such a big pain if you're trying to reform the planet. ![]() I mean it doesn't make sense to plant trees if they get burnt down at the same time, so it was always an important aspect of our tree planting projects to make sure that we're also protecting trees that are standing. Wildfire protection is, of course, aligned with our mission. I hope that every sustainability officer soon will call themselves a regeneration officer and that those artificially low ambitions go away as well. We want to be role models for that and take away those old ways of thinking. Within the coming decades, we need to very quickly move to sustainability but then really, really quickly move to regeneration. The challenge of the new generation, or maybe still our generation, is to not only stop damaging but also start repairing. My generation and all earlier generations messed it up. Regeneration is the mantra of the 21st century. This kind of regenerative mindset is something that I'm very excited about. We now need to think regenerative and 100% renewable energy is sustainable, but 200-300% then you're really having a positive impact on the planet. So that's what we're trying to do, but we're also trying to take away this thinking that we just need to be sustainable or just try to have zero impact on the planet because that's not possible anymore. If Google would increase its renewable energy target to 300%, that would be massive. Because otherwise they're losing users to us. We’re sure that we have an influence on their climate emissions. That could be used for profitable renewable energy investments, so why are they not doing that? The big role of what we're doing is that we are helping our competitors to become more ambitious when it comes to their climate targets, and I think we're already seeing that with Google and Microsoft. They have billions of dollars lying around in their bank accounts. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are all very proud of their 100% renewable numbers. The idea behind that is that we want to get other companies to do the same. We raised the bar and took away this artificial glass ceiling that a lot of companies have. Because, look, everybody should be at 100%, but if the leaders stop at 100%, that doesn't make sense. ![]() But at some point, we realized if we want to be seen as a role model, it doesn't make sense to stop at 100% renewable energy. We use renewable energy for our own servers, so that just made sense. The 200% idea we had from the very beginning. How do these practices fit into your overall mission? Your servers run on more than 200% renewable energy and on July 27, you donated all your profits to fighting wildfires. Talk to me about your operations outside of tree planting. Below are highlights from the conversation that didn’t make my article on Forbes. I spoke with Christian Kroll, founder and CEO of Ecosia, to learn about the company, its tree planting process, and its broader responsible business practices. It also puts a focus on user privacy and transparency. The company launched in 2009 and, to date, has planted more than 130 million trees. While people undoubtedly find its services useful, the company has been criticized often for its handling of user privacy, its dissemination (or lack thereof) of information, and its sheer size.Įcosia is an alternative search engine, which plants trees as users browse using the search engine. As the world’s largest search engine, Google is used by billions of people, all of whom the company is collecting data on. Technology has dramatically changed the way we live while also giving a handful of large companies vast amounts of data about us and our daily lives.
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