News of the ‘latte levy’, a government initiative aimed at tackling the recycling of disposable coffee cups in the UK, has been a hot topic in the press this month. With an estimated 2.5 billion paper cups thrown away in the UK every year, it seems like charging customers for their paper cup is the only way to tackle environmental issues right? Wrong!

Thanks to the internet, there are more innovative ways we can help support environmental causes (and some of them won’t cost you a penny). One of the best examples I recently came across was a search engine called Ecosia, which uses its generated ad income to plant trees all over the world. Originally launched as a start-up in Berlin, Ecosia has already planted over 19 million trees in a bid to reforest some of nature's most damaged landscapes.

More than 6 billion internet searches are made per day worldwide meaning the earth’s greenery could be totally transformed by Ecosia if everyone used it. So, next time you think about throwing your (soon-to-be expensive) paper cup away, try searching via Ecosia for a better way to recycle it (and plant a tree in the process!).