A non-profit group has struck a deal with Yahoo and Bing to offer an environmentally-friendly search engine.

 

The Ecosia search engine contributes up to 80% of its income to a WWF reforestation program. The group says since launch in December it has saved the equivalent of 37 square meters of rain forest.

 

The search engine works as a plug-in for major browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.

 

It claims more than 60,000 active users and 315,000 searches daily and has raised $34,000 for the WWF.

 

Says Ecosia: “We are the greenest search engine for two reasons: Firstly, and most importantly, we donate our income to protect rainforests. Secondly our servers run on green electricity.

 

“Saving about two square meters of rainforest per search prevents many tons of CO2 emissions. In comparison to that the impact of green servers is minimal. They only prevent about 2 grams of CO2 emission per search.”

 

Ecosia said Google did not partner with altruistic search engines because as market leader it “does not make economic sense” for them. “They would lose users by partnering with Ecosia and thus generate less income.”