Back at the end of 2019 we highlighted a new campaign at Royal Holloway, University of London. Royal Holloway on Ecosia aimed to make the carbon-friendly search engine, Ecosia, the default search engine on all university computers.
We’re thrilled that after a year of campaigning by Rhiannon and the Royal Holloway on Ecosia team, Royal Holloway’s default search engine is Ecosia!
This makes the university the 10th in the world to have made this change. In just the first week of using Ecosia staff and students at RHUL contributed to planting 130 trees with their searches.
Ecosia uses its revenue to plant trees all around the world. It also offsets its energy consumption with renewable energy, making it a carbon negative search engine. According to Ecosia, if they were as big as Google they could remove an estimated 15% of global carbon emissions.
If you’re a Royal Holloway student or staff member you can download Ecosia by clicking here. This means your searches will be counted in the university’s totals. Even if you’re not a student, downloading Ecosia is a simple step to reducing your carbon footprint.
We’d love to see more universities making the switch. If you’d like to set up a similar campaign, Ecosia have some tips on how to successfully run one.
Students for Planetary Health 