Internet searches made by the UK public in just one day have funded the planting of 520 trees at NHS hospitals across the country, including in Cornwall.

A partnership between green search engine Ecosia, The NHS Forest and Trees for Cities will use revenues from online searches made by UK users on Thursdays 14th, 21st and 28th May, to fund tree-planting at UK hospitals.

The trees will be a living thank you to the NHS, as well as lasting green space to help boost staff and patient mental wellbeing and reduce air pollution levels.

The initiative has been planned to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week and Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust is among those involved.

Ecosia describes itself as ’like any other search engine, except our profits are used to plant trees’. A rolling counter on its home page shows that the social enterprise has so far planted more than 95 million trees in different countries around the world.

Ecosia is also privacy-friendly in that it does not sell details to advertisers, uses no third-party trackers and anonymises all data within a week.