Reduce Your Carbon Footprint By… Searching?

By now, most of us have heard about the global warming crisis that is endangering the planet. Al Gore spoke on the topic in the phenomenally popular documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and you can even find several sites across the web (even a blog) out to educate the world about the issue and how it takes each of us individually to commit to changing our lifestyles to make a difference. The problem there, though, is that most people fear change and commitment. I mean, what percentage of those people who make new years resolutions actually follow through for the entire following year? And, how many people would actually give up their car to ride public transportation? We still consider gas a necessity, even when the prices are soaring to record amounts at the pump.

When I initially heard about an environmental search engine launching, my first thought was 'how is that possible?' which was followed by 'why didn't someone think of that sooner?' after I learned what it was all about.

As an Australian initiative based in the UK, ecocho basically promises to help offset carbon emissions at no cost to the user by planting 2 trees for every 1000 searches that are conducted through its newly launched search engine. Those two trees could potentially help counter-balance up to one ton of greenhouse gases. The more searches users conduct, the more trees there are to be planted to help offset carbon emissions. And, technically, switching to ecocho doesn't really qualify as a 'change' since searches can be performed using either Google or Yahoo! search technology. ecocho has a more detailed explanation of the "tree process" on their website.

We all know how important the top search engines are to the web, and ecocho is out to utilize those engines to help make a difference (and surely a little profit on the side). A 2005 survey [PDF] by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that 56% those online on any given day will use a search engine. Imagine how many searches those users conduct and then picture how many trees could be planted with just a portion of those searches.

"In the UK alone, people conduct over 1.5 billion Internet searches a month," stated ecocho founder, Tim MacDonald. "If we can capture just one per cent of that traffic, we will make a significant contribution towards lowering the impact of harmful greenhouse gas emissions."

Mr. MacDonald is aiming to reinvest 70% of ecocho's revenue into its carbon-offset program and also expects to begin supporting similar programs in other countries soon.

One issue that I found, however, is the speed at which results are returned. Conducting a search for "iPod Touch applications" on ecocho using the Google algorithm took 6.317 seconds to load the results pages in Firefox, while the same search directly on Google took just 2.326 seconds on a FiOS internet connection. It's minor for me, but it could be different for those with slower connections to the web.

All in all its a great idea and, though its only a first step, it is one of the easiest ways for internet users to help reduce carbon emissions. Isn't it about time?