My guest today is Shannon Smith, Communications and User Voice at Ecosia.org, a search engine that helps the environment by planting trees as you search the web. We’ll be talking about how trees create clean air and our our the air pollution we create harms trees. Ecosia is a search engine that plants trees when users search the web. The social business has already raised over $1.5 million for rainforest protection since its founding in December 2009. By donating 80% of its ad income to a tree planting program in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, Ecosia aims to have the highest positive impact on the environment per dollar. The Berlin-based start-up neutralises all CO2 emissions related to its search as well as publishing donation receipts online – its promise to the two million monthly Ecosia users, who are proving that small changes can have a big impact. Former journalist and writer Shannon Smith has liaised between users, partners and team members since 2010 to build Ecosia into a movement for sustainable change. She is a Texas native. www.ecosia.org
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Toxics and Trees
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Shannon Smith
Date of Broadcast: July 09, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free.
It’s Wednesday, July 9th 2014 and we are having a thunderstorm here in usually sunny Clearwater, Florida. But that’s just typically our summer weather pattern, and so it is very nice to have our thunderstorms cool down the weather here. It’s great. It’s just the way nature works, and it’s wonderful.
Today, we are actually going to be talking about nature. We’re going to be talking about the environment and toxic chemicals. Usually, we talk about health and home and toxic exposures. But today, we are going to talk about trees and toxics.
My guest is Shannon Smith. She’s a Communications and User Voice at Ecosia.org. And what Ecosia does is it’s a search engine that helps the environment by planting trees as you search the web.
So, all of the CO2 that they produce relating to all the searches that we do is offset by planting trees.
And so today, we are going to be talking about trees and how our actions such as searching on the web and other things affect air pollution, what trees do to help us with air pollution and how air pollution damages trees. So we are going to be looking at the bigger picture today, outside the four walls of our homes to see how our actions produce toxic chemicals that affect the environment.
Hi Shannon.
SHANNON SMITH: Hi Debra. Thanks for having me on.
DEBRA: Thank you. Shannon is speaking to us all the way from Berlin where Ecosia is based. And Shannon, why don’t we start by telling us a little bit about Ecosia?
SHANNON SMITH: Sure. I think […] Ecosia, just like you described, is a search engine that basically plants trees. It’s just like Google or Yahoo or any of those guys, except that we take 80% of our advertising revenue that we earned from the search engine and we donate that to a program we’re partnering with. It’s the Nature Conservancy Plant a Billion Trees Project.
And they have several different programs—one is concentrated in a tropical rainforest, one of them is in Brazil called the Atlantic Forest. And that is the portion of forest on the eastern coast of Brazil. It also runs into some of the most heavily populated areas in Brazil. So it’s one of the parts of the rainforest that’s most […] deforestation.
DEBRA: Good. And how did you get interested in working in this field?
SHANNON SMITH: I have always been interested in sustainability issues and simplifying things and going back to nature. We talk about toxicity and things like that—and sickness and also consumption.
It’s just different things that all lead back to what feels like the same issue—and that is that there’s an overtaxing of the resources we have in the world. This desire to produce things cheaply causes us to produce goods using methods that are destructive whether that’s by producing a product that is toxic based on what it has been made of or what it has been made with or how it has been made, the resources that we use to make it.
So I feel like all of these things connect very closely and sustainability is a concept in terms of using the resources we have from the earth basically and a way that future generations can also still have those resources and benefits from them. That seems to be the only real way forward.
And in a way, when you look at the growing population of the world and the way we are all using resources, I think it just makes sense to take a look at what we are doing, what we are producing, how we are producing it and to do it in a way where we can all survive or the next few generations can survive hopefully. And I think it would solve a lot of the problems we’re experiencing […] which are many.
That was where my interest originated. And then I found Ecosia to be a perfect fit in terms of a movement and an effort that proves that small changes can make a big difference.
DEBRA: One of the things about this is that it’s something that each one of us can do without much effort at all—and I’m speaking to my listeners now. The only way that I see anything different on my screen, I sign up. And it’s free and it’s easy. It takes about a minute to switch over.
And the thing is it has a very nice little banner at the top that’s teal blue and a nice little logo. And so, the only thing that I see different than using any other search engine is that it’s got a little counter at the top that tells me how many trees have been planted to offset my use.
So I don’t have to do anything, except to go about searching the internet just the way I usually would.
The search results come from Yahoo and Bing and also there’s a little tab at the top that you can search the Google if you want. There is a tab for images and apps and videos. So it’s just as easy as any other search engine, except that as you use it, it plants trees. Is that about it?
SHANNON SMITH: Exactly. It’s perfectly described. Yes.
DEBRA: Thank you. I don’t see any reason why anybody shouldn’t just sign up with you and get tree planted as they search the web. And as we go through the show today, you will give a lot more information about why it is important to plant trees and how that benefits us with toxics in our world.
SHANNON SMITH: Definitely. Yeah, that’s one of the things that I am most excited about. We realized that people were really interested in the search engine when it was first founded back at the end of 2009. And that is that it is something easier. It’s a place for people to meet and come together to contribute to something to make it better.
And it is also something important if you think of the numbers when you can realize that my collective contribution with the community of likeminded people have the potential to truly make a positive difference in reducing toxicity in the world and reducing carbon emissions and different things like that, these things that are all threatening the wellbeing of the people and the planet itself throughout the world.
DEBRA: You covered this briefly when you were talking earlier. But I wanted to just say so that our listeners understand where you get the money to plant these trees if you […] And so, you explained this the other day, but explain how your advertising works.
SHANNON SMITH: Sure. This is interesting because I think a lot of people aren’t quite clear on how search engines in general earn their money. There actually are only, I guess, two or maybe three major search engines with their search indexes in the world. I mean there’s a few definitely, the Yandex in Russia and different things like that.
But definitely in the US, we’ve got Google and Yahoo, which has actually come together with Bing in the last couple of years. I think they should have seen search engine index. Search engines, everybody is seeing that they display ads on the side of search results or above them, the sponsored links. And every time a person searches in the search engine and click on an ad, that’s where the certain number of cents.
Sometimes you even have affiliate links wrapped up in the search results and if a purchase is made through one of those affiliate links, often times you will have 3% to 5% of the purchase price going to the search engine displaying the links or to the company that’s distributing the affiliate links throughout the web.
So, there are a lot of people profiting from these ads that we are bombarded with every day on the web and sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly. So it is a huge industry. The life blood of the web is this model, this advertising model.
So what we have done is it’s what makes the world go around. Everybody is a part of this. But what we have decided to do is pick up money that we’d normally get from the Yahoo ads that are displayed on the site.
And we have promised users to donate 80% of all of that ad revenue to a tree planting program. We have chosen Nature Conservancy’s Plan a Billion Trees Program in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil like we said. But exactly all that money comes from the revenue we earned from the ads that are displayed on the site.
DEBRA: Right. So that revenue comes by user clicking through probably pay per click or something like that. And so when you are using this, the more click, the more money they get, the more trees they can plant.
We need to go to break. But we will be right back. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
My guest today is Shannon Smith from—how do you say it? Ecosia?
SHANNON SMITH: Ecosia.
DEBRA: Ecosia. And we’ll be talking more about toxics and trees. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Shannon Smith. She’s the Communications and User Voice—what does that mean, Communications and User Voice?
SHANNON SMITH: Sure.
DEBRA: What do you do?
SHANNON SMITH: I’ve worked, for the time when I’m at the Ecosia, on the connection between the users we have, which is something like two million monthly unique users now, the connection between those users and what we do to create a symbiosis so that we are always going in the right direction and making sure that everybody is in the same page and that everything that is happening is being communicated clearly back and forth.
And it is a huge part of what we do because we are completely just like any business. We consider ourselves a social business. But like any business, we would be relying on our customers. And we rely on the people who believe in Ecosia to support us.
And based on that principle, we owe this group a sense of transparency and making sure that our impact is actually having an impact and that we see that information back to users.
So the idea is that users keep us in check and we keep users informed. And that’s how this entire project grows and how we actually have an impact and change something altogether in the end.
DEBRA: Yes. Does the word Ecosia have a meaning? How did it come together as a word?
SHANNON SMITH: That’s funny. A lot of people have asked the Founder, Christian, about that. It was just a play on words. Christian actually had a couple other charitable search engines, so to speak, before Ecosia.
One of them is called Forestle. Some people still remember it. It’s since been redirected into Ecosia, but that actually worked with Google for some time with Google search results. But it was cut off after about a week or so when users grew quite rapidly from the beginning.
And so Christian was quickly scrambling to find another partner to work with. So Yahoo and Bing were the only options in Germany. And then a partnership started from there.
But he was basically just looking for a name for another search engine for his next search engine that would become a little bit more international, this idea of eco or something that sticks in people’s minds so that it is at least recognizable for the values it embodies. I think Eco-Utopia is where the idea generated. But there’s no other real significance to the name.
DEBRA: Because sometimes people have a story behind how their coined term came to be.
SHANNON SMITH: Sure.
DEBRA: But I think it does communicate. I understand the eco aspect of it immediately. Yes. So let’s talk about trees.
The thing that is most amazing to me about trees is that trees help us breathe. Without trees, we would not be able to breathe because what happens is that as we, humans and other mammals, breathe in, we need to have oxygen. And when we breathe out, we breathe out carbon dioxide.
And trees are exactly the opposite. Trees love carbon dioxide. In fact, they eat carbon dioxide for dinner. It’s their favorite thing. And they take this carbon dioxide and they release oxygen. So their function of what they take in and what they give out is exactly the opposite to ours.
And I love that picture, seeing this picture in my mind of I am breathing out something that a tree loves and a tree is breathing out something that I need in order to survive.
SHANNON SMITH: Exactly.
DEBRA: Go ahead.
SHANNON SMITH: Trees are these incredible things that are incredibly complementary to the natural way that we live. And it is so neat to have a partner in the natural world like that that cleans up your mess and you clean its mess up, this perfect exchange, something like a vital exchange.
DEBRA: It is a perfect exchange. Yeah. It is like this in and out. I can just see in front of me a tree. In my mind, I can see a tree and me standing in front of a tree. And as I breathe out, I am just going,
“Here tree, have all this carbon dioxide.” And the tree is just delighting in giving me oxygen.
And I think that most people don’t understand where our oxygen comes from, that it comes from trees, it comes from forest. And when we don’t have forest anymore, we don’t have oxygen and that’s just the way it is.
And so we talk about toxic chemicals being destructive, but there are also things that we need on the positive side that if we don’t have them, we are not going to do well either. And so trees are just so important, so important. And I just wanted to say that I love trees and that we need to make sure that we take care of them.
SHANNON SMITH: Absolutely
DEBRA: So I have some facts here that I have gathered about trees and pollution. Do you want me to give those or do you have some things that you would like to say about trees and pollution?
SHANNON SMITH: Yeah, sure. You’ve said a lot. I mean trees are just outside. We see them, but we might not really realize what they do. Just some interesting things that have come up lately that have come to our attention, especially throughout working on this program is the fact that air pollution is killing more people than AIDS and malaria, combined in the world, as well as causing cancer and different things like that.
I think air pollution is also in the same category as tobacco smoke, UV radiation, plutonium and things like that. And it is really quite neat that trees, once you plant, have the ability to clean things up a little bit. And there are things and lifestyle changes that we could definitely make.
The change will come slowly and things we can do to protect ourselves to the world in different ways in different parts of the world. It is simple as planting trees. And there are a couple of examples of really neat experiments that have been done to see where a row of 30 birch trees have protected houses. It cut the pollutants in the air by 50% in just two weeks or something like that.
DEBRA: Wow.
SHANNON SMITH: So there’s a whole array of possibilities in terms of trees you plant in your backyard.
And then it’s a whole other slew of benefits when you talk about reforesting the rainforest, exactly.
DEBRA: Yeah. We need to go to break again but we will be right back. You are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Shannon Smith from Ecosia. We’re going to talk more about trees when we come back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You are listening to Toxic Free talk Radio. I am Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Shannon Smith from Ecosia. That’s a search engine that plants trees to offset the energy use when you are searching.
When you sign up with them, they have a little counter that’s on the banner at the top of the page. And that tells you how many trees have been planted on your behalf. And they have already planted 36 trees for me and I just have only been using it for a week or so.
So it really shows how much energy gets used. It is already 36 trees worth of offset. Shannon, are you there?
SHANNON SMITH: Yeah. It’s great. Yeah.
DEBRA: It’s a fun thing to do, but it also really raises awareness. It’s not like you are just out there saying we are going to plant some trees. You see exactly the number of trees that are being planted for you. So I am happy to plant those 36 trees.
SHANNON SMITH: You know what is so great? We are so happy that you have. Thanks. Yes. And it is great, the number up there. It’s neat too. Like you said, it raises awareness, but it’s also a collaborative thing as well. The number of trees we helped plant with people searching at this very moment. So it’s what happens when you come together and then trees get planted.
And it’s a neat thing as well to program. That’s been going on for quite some time and there’s a lot of information on the Plant a Billion Trees website about exactly how that’s going and the successes they’ve had with the trees that have been planted in this particular region of Brazil. Yeah, that’s positive impact on the entire world’s climate and that sort of thing.
DEBRA: Yeah. So if you are interested in signing up, go to Ecosia.org. So that’s Ecosia.org.
I just wanted to say a few things about the relationship between trees and toxic pollution and what happens. And so trees will absorb. They help trap and hold particle pollutant, things like dusts and ash and pollen and smoke that can damage the human lungs.
But they also absorb CO2 as we all know and other dangerous gasses. And as we said earlier, in exchange, trees then provide the atmosphere with the oxygen for us to breathe.
Now, actually one acre of trees will produce enough oxygen for 18 people every day. An acre of trees isn’t actually that much. It would be interesting. Do you happen to know how many trees are needed to supply the oxygen for one person?
SHANNON SMITH: That’s a good question. If it’s 18 per acre, do you know the offset for car is quite interesting? It’s like an acre of trees.
It also depends on the kind of trees—that’s an interesting thing—a young tree or an old tree or a tropical tree or a temperate climate tree. But I think an acre of trees can offset the emission of 2.7cars for a year. It’s like the trees and the cars on the road for the duration of that year or something like that.
DEBRA: Wow, that’s interesting.
SHANNON SMITH: It’s a good idea of what would be needed to counteract, for instance, our driving habits, so yeah.
DEBRA: Right. So trees remove gasses by absorbing them through their pores in their leaf surface. But here’s the thing. Trees are performing this big job of removing particles and gasses from the air that we are producing. I find this so interesting.
Just think about if you were a tree and you were absorbing all those particles and gasses into your body, it the same thing for a tree as it is for us. When we are exposed to toxic chemicals, it damages our cells, it damages our body in various ways.
In the same way, trees being exposed to our pollution are being damaged and the air pollutants that enter trees damage their leaves, which collect the sunlight. And so it damages the process of photosynthesis, which makes food for them and it just weakens the trees, making them susceptible to other health problems, such as insects and diseases.
So we really need to be looking at the fact that trees are being affected by these toxic exposures as much as we are, as living bodies. They are being exposed and they are being harmed.
SHANNON SMITH: I think it is ally interesting too because it points back to that symbiosis thing we are talking about and how all these things are connected. It’s like one part of this environment whether people in the other side of the world or trees, which we just think are there sometimes and don’t pay much attention.
They are suffering and essentially. In the end, we are suffering too. So there’s always a cost to that. It’s not just the direct effects in our body, but it’s the effects on the things around us that we are also dependent on. This is very much true of trees absolutely.
DEBRA: Very much so. Also living here in Florida, it’s hot for six months. It’s hot. I am very happy to have the thunderstorm clouds today. But I am always looking for trees because underneath the tree is a lower temperature where we can feel a lot more comfortable and it is a lot easier for us to live in that way.
Yeah, I am just thinking. Oh, I know what I want to say. Oh no, I forgot it again. That’s the way it is.
Okay, here it is.
Okay, so we were talking earlier how when we breathe out, we create the carbon dioxide. But we also need to be thinking about how when we use things like search engines or computers or anything that requires energy, every single second, we are producing pollution that is harming trees.
SHANNON SMITH: Absolutely.
DEBRA: And so it is like our exhale, it’s our toxic exhale. I had never thought of it like that before.
SHANNON SMITH: Absolutely. And people talk about carbon footprints and no matter whether you are onboard with climate change or not in terms of it being an issue, it is still the absolute truth that the things we do have an effect on other things.
And just like you say, in the same way that we breathe out, we breathe in, we take up resources. Every time we purchase something or use something, it has an effect, exactly.
DEBRA: Yeah. We have to take another break, but we will come back. You are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Shannon Smith from Ecosia and they are a search engine that plants trees to offset your energies when you search the web. It is a good thing to do. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I am Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Shannon Smith from Ecosia. That’s Ecosia.org. You can go there and sign up for their search engine services and they will plant trees for you as you search the web to offset your use and production of pollutants from the burning of fossil fuels for energy.
I have a list of some of the major air pollutants and their primary sources. And these are things that trees absorb and collect and take out of the air, but also cause damage to trees. So again, on the one hand, they are doing this tremendous service for us by leaning up air pollution. But the story doesn’t stop there because we need to recognize that they are doing that at the expense of their own health.
So here are some things. And some of these I hadn’t thought about before. So burning of oil, coal and natural gas for energy. Here’s another one, hydrogen fluoride and silicon tetrafluoride. Well, the first one was carbon dioxide. This one is hydrogen fluoride and silicon tetrafluoride. That comes from steel manufacturing. So when we are using stainless steel pans and things like that, that’s creating air pollution.
Ozone, which probably everyone asserts of, is a chemical reaction of sunlight on automobile exhaust gasses. Driving your car is producing pollutants that are harmful to trees.
Let’s see, burning fossil fuels. Okay, here’s another one, chlorofluorocarbons. They come from air conditioners, refrigerators and industrial foam.
So all these things, it is not just driving our cars, not just burning fossil fuels for energy, but every single product that we use and is made. All of them require the burning of energy and some of them have chemicals in them like chlorofluorocarbons that are also pollutants in their own right. So we need to be thinking about the energy use of everything because every time a product is made, every time we drive our car—I know these are sobering facts, but they are facts—it’s like having a toxic exhale out into the environment.
SHANNON SMITH: Yeah. That is exactly right, Debra. Even just the awareness is important. Lifestyle changes can be difficult to make. So the first step is the understanding how all of that works, just like you described basically. Everything we do and use has some connection to these things.
And when we recognize that, then we can either start to make changes and start to do things to try and offset what we are doing. But that awareness is so important.
We’ve been talking about how trees are incredible weapons against the harmful effects of all of these pollutants. Of course, they can only take so much too. So it’s […] expect.
DEBRA: It can only take so much. And I think that it all comes down to—we hear things like terms like carbon offsets in the news. And carbon offsets, I mean it is really important. But the thing is you can only trade around carbon offsets so much that we always need to be looking at it. If there’s something harmful, we need to be looking at reducing at the source.
I’m going to relate this back to the human body because I think that it all works in the same way. In a human body, if we are exposed to too much toxic chemicals, what happens is that our organ systems start breaking down, that our bodies get overloaded and then we start getting sick and eventually we die. I know we are going to die anyway, but die sooner and die less comfortably from being disabled by these toxic chemicals.
But the thing is it is happening out in the environment too. It is happening to trees. It is happening to birds. It’s happening to all parts of the environment. And so we really, really, really need to be reducing our pollution at the source, not only for ourselves, but for the entire system of life on the planet.
SHANNON SMITH: Exactly.
DEBRA: Yeah. So in the meantime, one of the things what we can do is plant trees. But if we still produce so much toxic chemicals that the trees get overwhelmed and we don’t have forests because we have killed the trees, then we are really going to have a problem. And so I think it is best to do whatever we can right now before we destroy the entire planet to reduce our toxic chemical use.
SHANNON SMITH: Exactly. Someone had the brilliant visual of the frog and hot water or the cold water that’s heated up. The fog doesn’t know anything is wrong as it heated, but slowly of course. It jumps out quickly. The water is boiling and that’s a problem immediately.
But do we want to be sitting in that cold water that’s heating up, heating up, heating up, waiting for disaster to strike with our health or with the environment around us that we are so dependent on?
And I think you make such a great point about toxicity in general and these products that are produced in a way that we don’t want to have anything to deal with. Why don’t we take the catalyst out? You encourage people stop buying them and they stop getting produced.
And that’s one way with the power of consumption or consumers’ choice that you can really also make a difference. And just that awareness of how that works, how it affects us and how it affects environment is great.
DEBRA: It does. I do want to say that I am not suggesting that people stop buying things altogether or not have the things that we need in order for us to survive individually.
SHANNON SMITH: Sure.
DEBRA: I think what needs to happen is there needs to be a big shift from doing things in the toxic way to doing things in a more sustainable way. And certainly what you are doing with Ecosia is a step in that direction.
And it certainly happens step by step. I’ve been doing this for 35 years and there are still things that I am learning every day. There’s still always more information, more awareness to have and another step that one can take. But we just keep taking them step by step and step and then pretty soon there’s a big change in the world. I think there are already is. Don’t you see that we are moving in that direction?
SHANNON SMITH: Absolutely, absolutely. I think there are all kinds of sustainable products I think you mentioned being produced and people are demanding them, especially here in Germany where we are based.
And I know it’s happening in the States as well and it is incredible and people are doing really incredible things. And you see that in our users too all over the world. These people know what’s going on and they are willing to make small steps.
That’s the point. It’s not about guilt. It’s not about telling ourselves how terrible we are. It’s really about looking at what we can do trying to understand what we can understand and taking these small steps as a group, which I think will really add up pretty quickly.
DEBRA: It does. Shannon, it has been a pleasure talking with you. We only have about two minutes, three minutes left. So are there any final things that you’d like to say that we haven’t covered?
SHANNON SMITH: Yeah. Thank you for having us on first of all. I think a lot of people don’t know about Ecosia and that’s one of the things we hope. It’s that people like the concept and like the service.
We will start talking about it because I think it comes from people, from everybody who is choosing to use a search engine and the awareness it creates about our relationship to each other and to the environment and things like that.
Yeah, it’s just wonderful what users have been able to do so far. We are grateful and excited and grateful that people like you showed interest about it. So that’s fantastic. And it’s great what you are bringing to light on the show.
DEBRA: Thank you.
SHANNON SMITH: The things that you do with toxicity and sustainability, I think that’s the only true way forward. So it’s exciting.
DEBRA: I think so too. I mean we have to recognize that what we do affects the world that we live in and that everything that we put out comes back to us and that that’s just part of the way of life and that we have the control and the ability to make choices right in our hands.
Every time we buy a product, we have a choice. As I have said, I’ve been doing this for 35 years. I think this year is year number 35.
SHANNON SMITH: Congratulations.
DEBRA: Thank you.
SHANNON SMITH: […]
DEBRA: It’s actually been a pleasure for me to do this work. It continues to be a pleasure because I am not focused on the toxic chemicals even though I need to know what they are and what the problems are. I don’t focus on the toxic chemicals. I focus on what are the solutions and just being able to see the world.
I just look at the world, looking for the nontoxic products, the sustainable products, the better ideas. And I am always looking for them. And then I am always just weeding out to see what I can find.
That’s what we do on the show. I invite people to be guests who are supplying the solutions like you.
Thank you so much again, Shannon.
Again, that’s Ecosia. It is at Ecosia.org. So you can go there. You can also go to Toxic Free Talk Radio.com to find out more about the show and about our upcoming guests and the past guests because all of these shows are recorded and archived. And we have wonderful shows, wonderful guests. So go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.ocm. Take a look and take a listen. Be well.
