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We live in an era of entrepreneurship, a concept that means creating business opportunities (1). In this sense, if anyone deserves the title of entrepreneur, it is Andresa Salgueiro. She already had what most people are looking for at present: a stable, well-paid job, a house and a car, but she decided to swap everything – with the key word being “swap”. Until recently, Andresa was a training manager in five-star hotels. But on the day her marriage ended, in part because of disagreements relating to attitudes on sustainability, she gave up everything and decided to live off 1111€ for …

Sagres. After 15 years, the Forte de Beliche has, like Sleeping Beauty, been woken from its sleep. Once upon a time, guests could eat well and sleep here. But then the small, loss-making, 5-star pousada was closed by the state, given up, forgotten. In the mid-1990s, a landslip underneath the chapel of Henry the Navigator (1391-1460) triggered fears that the whole monument could slide into the sea. The work that is needed to make it geologically safe is today more a question of high architectural art, of the money needed to provide this and of political will. In the search …

The ceremony presenting the eCobus, organised by Salvador Caetano and Siemens Portugal, took place on 8th October at Inter Airport Europe (international trade fair for the airports sector) in Munich. Being presented as the first 100% electric airport bus, the eCobus is derived from the Cobus diesel vehicles produced by Caetano Bus (the factory of the Salvador Caetano group based in Gaia) to which electric motor conversion systems are applied, developed by Siemens Portugal. The project also involved the collaboration of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management in the optimisation of each model. With an investment of one …

There are still people who don’t ride bikes because Portugal is not a “cyclable” country. But Rui Araújo, a Portuguese researcher from the University of Minho, decided to solve the problem: he made a prototype of a kit that can turn “normal” bicycles into electric bicycles. Costing €500, this device can be fitted to all bicycles, providing a range of 60 km and a maximum speed of 25 kph. This project was Rui’s Master’s thesis for the course in Industrial Electronic Engineering and Computers he is attending, and although it’s not ready to be sold commercially yet, a new kit …

The private educational programme for schools “Faia Brava” was successfully financed through crowdfunding  (www.ppl.com.pt) . €4,150 was used for six safari tents so that classes of school children could be given practical eco-lessons on the ground in the Faia Brava gorge in the wilderness of northern Portugal. €4,508 was raised from 77 private investors and donors. Themed walks, bird watching, seminars and educational games in the over 850 hectares of the unique nature reserve of the river Côa to the north of Guarda are intended to ensure increased understanding of our flora and fauna in Portugal.

Every day, thousands of cosmetic products are consumed, the majority of which contain some kind of chemical agent which tends to affect one’s health. It was with this concern it mind that the sisters Rita and Cátia Curica founded Organii, the first Portuguese company dedicated to organic cosmetics with personalised solutions for each skin. Products are cultivated without any use of pesticides and produced without the addition of any artificial ingredients. Organii’s idea is to obtain purer and more active extracts, and in parallel reduce their environmental footprint. It is not only that the products were not tested on animals; …

At a time when clothing-related allergies are becoming increasingly worse, the online shop Tecidos Ecológicos (Ecological Fabrics) has invested in supplying ecological fabrics. This means that the manufacture of the fabrics is sustainable (1) because, by avoiding the use of chemicals, the effect on the health of the planet and its inhabitants is reduced to a minimum. But also because all types of synthetic dyes or those produced through genetic manipulation are avoided. All the items sold by Tecidos Ecológicos have certification from GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standards), an organisation involving the USA, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan. The …

What do a mathematician and an architect get up to together? In the case of Ricardo Reis and Nuno Lopes, they have created a route calculator for public transport routes in Portugal. They include all vehicles in it and offer people the possibility of coordinating timetables in order to reduce waiting times. Formed following a competition by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with the aim of solving social problems in Portugal, the company Mais Perto set up the project TransportesPúblicos.PT. Here, you can find different means of transport – road, rail or river –including tourist lifts and urban buses. You can …

ECO123 spoke to the inventor of a completely new method of producing recycled paper, the biologist Dr. Philipp Althöfer (47). He studied natural sciences at the universities of Düsseldorf, Bonn and Cologne. The topic for his diploma thesis was: Biotechnical treatment of process-water using the example of a paper factory processing scrap paper in a large city. And his 2001 doctoral thesis: Softening and re-use of biologically treated circulation water from paper manufacture. Althöfer is a lecturer at the University of Cologne, teaching the course “Biological Cleaning of Wastewater”. Just before this edition went to press, Althöfer showed ECO123 the …

In 1990, in the city of New York, the heart of capitalism, a group of people came together for one purpose: to ask God to inspire something that would make it possible for the “walls of consumerism” to collapse. These people felt that there was an urgent need to humanise the economy in a decisive manner. The previous year, the Berlin wall, the symbol of communism, had been demolished, and capitalism was able to appear, in the eyes of many, as the triumphant system. And that’s what it was. Its development, through globalisation and the expansion of financial capitalism, increasingly …