that means we’re stuck buying german coal.

is germany increasing or decreasing the amount of coal it burns every year?

ecosia has always felt kinda skeevy to me, because tree planting isn’t actually carbon positive. it becomes positive after 40 or so years, granted that the trees are not cut down. which is usually what happens.

they have a blog post on this

https://blog.ecosia.org/how-do-ecosia-trees-survive-cut-down/

the tree counter for example aims to match reality not hope:

For instance, if we plant 1000 trees and know from experience that the mortality rate in this area is 25%, we’ll only add 750 trees to our tree counter. We continually measure the survival rate of the trees we plant, through inventories and satellite technology, and adjust our tree counter accordingly.

Pretty much every tree planting project now involves cooperating with the local community around the trees, in some cases money goes to them to buy goods to prevent them from needing to cut down the trees

Not only that but tbh it’s just a good thing :)

also, just like ddg, ecosia is dependent on bing, the search provider with the worst carbon footprint, to function.

you are out of the game too long, they switched to google a while ago:

https://archive.md/cGE0Z

but! even better!

For the first time in its 16-year history, Ecosia users in France will now receive a proportion of their search results directly from EUSP’s independent European index. The rollout aims to serve 30% of French search queries by the end of the year.

https://tech.eu/2025/08/06/ecosia-rolls-out-independent-search-results-in-europe-taking-another-giant-step-away-from-big-tech/

How exciting!

Try to stay positive eh ;)