Helping the environment can be as easy as switching search engines. Eco-friendly search engines, Ecosia and Znout, can make your daily web searches a greener endeavor and are just as capable as traditional ‘big box’ search engines like Google and Yahoo!. A single Google search consumes as much energy as an 11-watt light bulb does in one hour. The average individual searches 1,000 times per year which contributes to the 2 percent of global CO2 emissions created by information and communications technology.

For each search, Ecosia saves 0.1 square meters of rain forest in Northern Brazil, which, for an individual internet user, can amount to 100 square meters over the course of a year! Ecosia is powered by Yahoo!’s search technology ensuring its reliability and quickness. When you do a search and click a sponsored link, the company pays Yahoo! a fee for that click. Yahoo! then gives a large percentage of that to Ecosia. So far 10,319,493 square meters of the rain forest have been protected!

If you prefer Google searches, you can use Znout. Znout stands for Zero Negative Output and focuses on carbon offsets. They buy renewable energy certificates every month to counterbalance the amount of emissions generated by the searches.

Help out the environment in the simplest, yet effective ways with Znout and Ecosia!