Ecosia is a search engine just like Google, with one major difference: it plants millions of trees with its revenue. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we would like Bellevue School District to make Ecosia the default search engine on district computers.

Simply put, when given the option between supporting Google (the current district default search engine) and supporting a global reforestation initiative, we think that it makes more sense to pick the global reforestation initiative. Planting trees is beneficial for local communities and ecosystems, and it also benefits everyone on planet Earth by mitigating the negative effects of climate change. Switching the district’s default search engine to Ecosia will result in planting tens of thousands of trees where they are most needed, and for such a simple action, these far-reaching positive effects clearly are worth pursuing.

To help us spread the word and have a larger positive impact, each signature on this petition and each share of our Instagram post will plant 5 trees! Bellevue community members have donated to a Tree fund (formerly the "Ecosia fund"), which will donate $0.50 to Trees for the Future for every signature of this petition, up to the amount that is in the fund. $0.50 is enough to plant 5 trees! We are also donating $0.50 for each time our Instagram post about this campaign (on our account @ihsgreen) is shared on Instagram - if your account is private, DM us a screenshot of your story so we can be sure to count it. You, too, can donate to the Tree fund by going to this link. In the interest of transparency, the Tree fund balance sheet can be found here, and proof of donations to Trees for the Future can be found here. NOTE: just to clarify, funds are not donated to Ecosia, as Ecosia does not accept donations. 

Because we know that having a person and a face behind all this is a lot more personable than just a bunch of links and spreadsheets, here's a video of one of our campaign leaders explaining what the Ecosia campaign means to him (sorry for the poor quality!).

To learn more about how we are doing all this and to answer any questions you may have about our campaign, please head to our Ecosia campaign info sheet/FAQ. No, really, check it out! It has lots of great information :)

You can set Ecosia as your default search engine by going to www.ecosia.org, and you can install the Ecosia app to make your phone Internet searches plant trees, too!

Contact us:

Email: interlakegteam@gmail.com;     Instagram: @ihsgreen;    Website: www.ihsgreen.weebly.com