University of Sussex makes Ecosia its default search engine

According to a Facebook post by the group Ecosia On Campus, the University of Sussex will be setting the eco-focused search engine, Ecosia, as its default browser within Microsoft Edge on PCs across campus this summer.

Ecosia donate 80% of the surplus income generated by web searches to non-profit conservationist organisations across the world, meaning that your searches can help charities plant trees.

The change comes after a term of campaigning by the student group Sussex On Ecosia, run by three second-year Anthropology students, Fred, Amber and Erin, who we caught up with earlier this year.

Speaking about the announcement, the group, now known as Ecosia on Campus told The Tab Sussex "After a successful term of campaigning and working closely with ITS we are pleased to announce that Ecosia is currently being installed within Microsoft Edge on all student PC's around campus!

"Since appearing at the refreshers fair in January our campaign has led to the planting of 611 trees, but if every student at Sussex searched using Ecosia just 3 times a day, as a university we could fund the planting of around 400,000 trees over the course of a year.

"We are now reaching out to students at other universities and aiming high to see Ecosia become the default search engine at universities nationwide."

You can download Ecosia on your own device and add to the University of Sussex's tree counter here.