Growing a Movement: Our Key Milestones
Ecosia is a not-for-profit company that plants and protects trees. We dedicate 100% of our profits to the planet and create simple ways for people to be climate active every day. Collaborating with local communities, we have planted more than 200 million trees (and counting) all over the world!
Our milestones
Ecosia has come a long way since its launch in 2009. This article takes you to our highlights of the past years.
2009: Ecosia was founded
Ecosia was founded by Christian Kroll in December 2009. While traveling after university, Christian experienced the positive impact that trees have on people and the planet. He also knew that search engines tend to be very profitable. That’s how he arrived at the idea of a search engine that dedicates its profits to tree-planting and restoration projects. Out of his apartment in Berlin, Christian launched Ecosia, the world's first not-for-profit search engine.
2014: Ecosia is Germany’s first B corp
In April 2014 Ecosia becomes Germany’s first certified Benefit Corporation (B. Corp) as recognized by B Lab, the Skoll Award- winning certification body. Our B. Corp status puts us in a category with leading pioneers in social business such as Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s. The B. Corp certification helps us check our values against our actions – and aligns us with a movement of smart, sustainable business that is steadily growing worldwide. Find out more about our B corp status.
2017: Ecosia builds its first solar plant
Since April 2017 we’ve produced twice as much renewable energy than what is needed to power our searches globally.
Our solar plants enable us to feed clean energy back into the grid and help crowd out electricity derived from coal and other fossil fuels. Because we generate double the amount of renewable energy that we need, and we plant trees that sequester carbon, each search with Ecosia actually removes 0.5 kg of CO2 from the air, making Ecosia carbon-negative.
2018: Ecosia becomes a steward-owned company
In October 2018 Christian signed a legal contract which you can read about here, binding Ecosia to our not-for-profit purpose forever. No one — including our founder — can ever sell Ecosia or take profits out of the company; meaning that we always have - and always will be, about the trees. You can read all about how we invest our funds for the planet here.
2022: 160M trees planted
In October 2022 Ecosia hits 160 million trees planted - and that number only continues to grow as the number of searches do.
What we're doing now
Ecosia has been a pioneering force in regenerative tech from day one even building our own solar plants to produce twice the energy needed to power your searches.
We don’t track you. We care about trees, not your data. And we’re fully transparent, sharing monthly financial reports and daily updates from the field so you can see exactly where your impact goes.
Our tree team carefully selects tree-planting projects that benefit both people and the planet. We work hand-in-hand with local partners and communities to plant the right trees in the right places and ensure they thrive for years to come.
The climate crisis can’t wait. We push for real system change by holding polluters accountable, calling out greenwashing, and demanding action from those in power.
Thanks to your searches, we’re growing one of the world’s largest environmental movements. Together, we’ve planted over 231 million trees in 35+ countries and we’re just getting started.