●●○ medium
There is no confirmed −; independently verified + decide the position (A). No unreachable strike-through.= non-additive meter
Ecosia: A steward-owned search engine that plants trees with every search. Travelling through Nepal and South America, Christian Kroll watched rainforest being cleared for cattle and soy, and decided to do something. Knowing that search engines are highly profitable, in 2009 he launched Ecosia from a Berlin apartment — a search engine that pours its profits into planting trees. Today Ecosia is one of the world's largest tree-planting organizations and Europe's largest search engine by headquarters, with around 20 million users. It earns revenue from search ads (using Bing's technology) and donates at least 80% of profits — 100% for climate action — to tree planting (roughly one tree every 30 seconds). It has funded more than 200 million trees across 35–40 countries, restored tens of thousands of hectares with native, biodiverse species (not monoculture), and verified them with GPS and third-party audits. Its servers run on its own solar power (over 200% of need), making each search carbon-negative. Two things stand out — radical transparency (it publishes financial reports and tree-planting receipts every month) and its ownership. In 2018 Kroll and his co-owner transferred shares to the Purpose Foundation, making Ecosia “steward-owned” so that no one can sell the company or extract its profits, locking the mission in permanently. It became Germany's first B Corp and has been named “Best for the World” six times. The letter is A; certainty is medium. Unconfirmed concerns are placed under “Watching.” (As of 2026-Q2; estimate based on public information.)
Main narrative
Travelling through Nepal and South America, Christian Kroll watched rainforest being cleared for cattle and soy, and decided to do something. Knowing that search engines are highly profitable, in 2009 he launched Ecosia from a Berlin apartment — a search engine that pours its profits into planting trees.
Today Ecosia is one of the world's largest tree-planting organizations and Europe's largest search engine by headquarters, with around 20 million users. It earns revenue from search ads (using Bing's technology) and donates at least 80% of profits — 100% for climate action — to tree planting (roughly one tree every 30 seconds). It has funded more than 200 million trees across 35–40 countries, restored tens of thousands of hectares with native, biodiverse species (not monoculture), and verified them with GPS and third-party audits. Its servers run on its own solar power (over 200% of need), making each search carbon-negative. Two things stand out — radical transparency (it publishes financial reports and tree-planting receipts every month) and its ownership. In 2018 Kroll and his co-owner transferred shares to the Purpose Foundation, making Ecosia “steward-owned” so that no one can sell the company or extract its profits, locking the mission in permanently. It became Germany's first B Corp and has been named “Best for the World” six times.
One person’s story (N1)
+ before → after
A degraded patch of land in a region where Ecosia works (Senegal, Brazil, Kenya, Madagascar and others), where forest was once cleared for cattle and soy, leaving soil and water depleted. Ecosia funds local partner organizations to plant diverse native species (not monoculture) — creating local jobs and ownership. In time the forest and its creatures return and the water cycle starts moving again. Jane Goodall says: “Ecosia and planting trees make the world better — for local communities, for chimpanzees, for all of us.” The everyday act of searching ends up on the side of forests left standing.
Source nature: Good Good Good / EIB / P3 major media / conservation. Positive effects are not used to offset negatives.
Positive / negative effects
+ effects
- Ecosia earned Germany's first B Corp certification in 2014 and was named “Best for the World” in 2015–2019 and 2021. In 2018 it moved to steward-ownership (transferring over 99% of shares to the Purpose Foundation, with a 1% veto), making it structurally impossible to sell the company or extract profits and locking the mission in permanently. It publishes financial reports and tree-planting receipts every month and verifies planting with GPS coordinates and third-party audits. It has planted over 200 million trees across 35–40 countries, restored over 60,000 hectares with native species, and achieved carbon-negativity on its own solar power (over 200% of need).P1 independent multi-stakeholder certification / B Lab / Purpose Foundation
− effects (confirmed)
- No confirmed −.
- Independent verification of tree survival and forest regeneration
- Accuracy of carbon-sequestration estimates
- Relationships with communities at planting sites
- Scaling while keeping the mission
A second look
Tree-planting impact carries inherent uncertainty — “trees planted” is not the same as “forest grown,” and survival rates and long-term carbon sequestration are hard to verify (though Ecosia is among the more transparent, with native species, audits, and natural regeneration). Claims like “0.5 kg of CO2 removed per search” depend on estimates of trees' sequestration. The search technology relies on Bing, and its market share is small next to Google's. It is a for-profit (steward-owned) company.
Sources
How to read this assessment
- Reachable upper bound (ceiling): a confirmed − sets the ceiling, and independently verified + decide the position within it. + do not cancel out −.
- The weight of evidence is not symmetric: only confirmed − are counted; the volume of disputes or allegations goes under “Watching.” + are counted from independent evidence, while an organization’s own PR is treated as “reference.”
- Size is not value: scale is not used in the assessment. Matters that stay within money or competition—investors, shareholders, sanctions, trade secrets—are also excluded.
- The letter (assessment) and certainty (how reliable the information is) are separate axes.
This is a translation; the Japanese version is authoritative. The assessments here are generated automatically by AI based on published criteria. The operator does not alter individual results. Because they are AI-generated they may contain errors, and they are opinion and commentary, not statements of fact. Where evidence is insufficient, the entry is marked “On hold.” Requests for correction are accepted via the form.
Terms: Narrative Value = an assessment (A–G) of the distance between the story an organization tells and its reality / Ceiling meter = a visualization of the reachable upper bound / Watching = unconfirmed matters not counted / Protected stakeholders = people, animals, nature, and future generations. | Generated by: AI | As of: 2026-Q2 | Back to top