A group of Sussex Anthropology students have started a campaign for The University to use Ecosia as its default search engine. The group consists of three second-year students.
Founding member, Fred Henderson told The Badger “We [Sussex on Ecosia] are aiming to raise awareness of the search engine around campus, with the end goal of making it the university’s default search engine.
“We have the support from ITS and are gathering a community base of users on campus, however, we wish to reach as many students as possible going into the spring term.”
Founded in 2009, Ecosia is a search engine that uses advertising revenue to plant trees. Ecosia claims to have planted over 20 million trees. The company posts its financial reports and tree planting receipts online for accountability purposes.
On starting the campaign, Fred Henderson told The Badger “We were all Ecosia users already and thought it would be a great thing to see Ecosia implemented into the university’s systems.”.
He also added that using Ecosia could potentially improve Sussex’s ranking on green league tables such as the People & Planet University League.
Sussex IT Services have supported the campaign and ‘Sussex on Ecosia’ are working with the ITS Internal Communications Manager.
Fred Henderson added “We understand that switching to Ecosia is not something that could happen overnight and so the campaign is to raise awareness with the end goal of seeing it implemented. We are trying to reach as many students as possible”.
The campaign is also active on Facebook and Twitter.
Images courtesy of Sussex on Ecosia.
