Homemade Shampoo Today we are going to talk about shampoo: a vegan alternative, without chemicals or plastics. I can’t imagine how many plastic shampoo bottles I’ve thrown away over the course of my life. Whether the bottle is 250 ml or 1000 ml, the flood of plastic never seems to end. Special soap for hair washing does exist, but it’s not always easy to find – and goodness knows where it’s been imported from, or rather, how much CO2 it has generated, even without counting my journey to buy it at the shop… plus, the never-ending list of ingredients makes …

izzy’s market, vila do bispo   If you are en route to Cabo de São Vicente, you should take the opportunity to visit IZZY’S MARKET in Vila do Bispo. This restaurant is a little hard to find, being located in a housing development between the town hall and that supermarket with the blue and yellow logo. Furthermore, it isn’t always easy to find a place to park in Senhora do Amparo. The place in question is a small café which also doubles as an organic food shop. We can particularly recommend the lunchtime dishes of the day. When we were …

Humanity is facing a grave crisis. This crisis originates in a small molecule: carbon dioxide. There isn’t a high concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, but its effect is enormous. Through the release of carbon dioxide, we are warming our planet as we are permanently burning petrol, diesel, coal, gas and other fossil fuels, emitting CO2 – lots of CO2, tons of it in fact. ECO123 is writing today about the climate crisis, a formidable challenge which demands action-based solutions. How can we solve this problem?   There’s no point in beating about the bush: eight months after the challenge …

Our dog is immediately given a bowl of water by Andreia Silva. We’ve come to try this vegetarian restaurant in Tavira at lunchtime. Good. I notice an Argentinian ant. It climbs up my table, walks across my plate and goes back down again. It’s not interested in the plate (from IKEA, Made in Portugal), since it’s still empty. This little ant is special. The species came into Europe via a port in southern France, then spread through Spain to Tavira, reaching as far as Silves and Monchique and from Aljezur to Cape Saint Vincent. It’s a little fighter. There are …

Our goal is to become self sufficient with our food. We need five years to achieve this. We will reach this goal in five steps. In the first year, we worked the land, clearing it and creating a fine tilth, removing the stones and weeds. At the same time, we composted, then used compost as a fertilizer for the first sowing in the second year: potatoes and onions, peas and beans, tomatoes and peppers and many more things. We also would recommend a permaculture course at Quinta Vale da Lama in Lagos. For today’s recipe, almost all of the ingredients …

Vânia Ribeiro (aged 34) has a degree in Psychology and an interest in alternative medicine. For four years, she took a course in Chinese medicine and massage. During that time, she discovered naturopathy. For health reasons, she felt the need to change her diet. She called the consumption of meat and fish into question and started a blog (and her own Youtube channel), which, some years later, now has 100.000 visitors in Portugal. Vegan life is presented on it every day, with new recipes, articles about health, photos, films and documentaries. It is called “Made by Choices”… Author Vânia Ribeiro …

Recently, Monchique was in the spotlight when the forest fires were being reported in the international press. The reason why these forest fires repeatedly rage across the Serra de Monchique and its neighbouring regions is closely linked to the investments of Semapa SA and its subsidiaries Navigator/Portucel and the industrial eucalyptus monoculture that is practised in an area of 2,500 km² to the North, both in Nave Redonda and São Teotónio (North-west), as well as in São Marcos da Serra (North-east). The main responsibility lies with the pulp producer Navigator (Semapa AG), which guarantees private producers the sale of their …