Short Stories

Saturday 3rd September 2022. In an ideal world, all those aggrieved by a multinational car manufacturer such as Renault or Volkswagen in Portugal, France, Germany, etc. would join forces as a group of claimants – in Europe – and prepare a class action against Renault Bank for instance, with the relevant court in Lisbon, in Paris or Düsseldorf, or against Volkswagen in Braunschweig. In the US this is a simple and efficient way for an aggrieved driver. In Europe we are still waiting for a law of this kind. In Portugal and in all other European states a collective lawsuit …

Saturday 20th August 2020. Sometimes, somebody can turn into a friend of the climate in the blink of an eye, when their fairly new electric car stops working and they have to continue on foot. This story is as incredible as it is true. It’s a story about a Renault ZOE, the first European electric car, which I bought on 28 December 2015, brand new, from Almotor in Portimão, for my journalistic work at ECO123. The price was exactly €21,476.87, excluding the battery, but including VAT. There was the odd discount too. However, as for the 24kW battery, that was …

Saturday, the 23rd of July 2022. So what does it take, really? What has to happen to put an end to the use of fossil fuels for good? Temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius will not give us respite over the coming days (and we’re only in July). By 18 July 1063 people had already died in the heatwave, as announced, matter-of-factly by the Ministry of Health in Lisbon. And now what? What should we do? Buy an air-conditioning unit? Bring down the room temperatures? Some people are able to afford this, most however can’t. At some point we all have …

Saturday 9th July 2022. … is a resource that’s becoming ever more scarce. Let me tell you about something that happened a while ago, something that ended in major marital strife. People will of course argue about everything and anything. Not only money issues, simple showering too can spell the end of a friendship… So what was the mishap? Picture a woman standing under the shower, her partner wasn‘t at home at that moment. So there she was, fully lathered up, and suddenly, there was no more water coming out of the shower head… In the city, you see, no-one …

Saturday 25th June 2022. Nothing is just simply black and white or a linear affair running in straight lines. Nearly every action, every product creates waste or CO2 at some stage in its life, or indeed winners and losers: the rich are becoming richer, the poor are becoming poorer. Biodiversity across all habitats on our planet is decreasing, and this is something we are keeping an eye on at every step of our journalistic work. Which is exactly why at ECO123 we operate differently, from the bottom up and with an awareness of the circular nature of our economy. When …

Saturday the 11th june 2022. Eighteen years ago, when we planted saplings in various beds and across different mountainous terraces of our plot of land, we weren’t yet familiar with the concept of the Miyawaki Forest, named after the Japanese botanist and plant ecologist Professor Akira Miyawaki (1928-2021, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Miyawaki). In 2004, when we received a donation of 5,000 different species of trees after the forest fire here in Monchique (11 September 2003) we were looking for a temporary space to keep these 15-cm saplings. I’m talking about oaks, alder, ash, linden, beech and carob trees, as well as umbrella pines …

Saturday 30th April 2022. The news that are missing from the media The „forgotten news“ of 2022 This year, the ranking of what has become known as the „Forgotten News“ is dominated by an environmental issue. The extinction of the butterflies A third of all butterfly species have already disappeared from our planet. The reasons for this are the lack of habitat and food plants, the use of pesticides in agriculture and finally climate change. However, butterflies have – similar to bees and other insects – an elementary role within the ecosystem: they contribute to the pollination of plants, creating …

Saturday 09.04.2022. Lisbon. It‘s a bright sunny Sunday morning in early April. A tiled azulejo panel in the parking lot of the Praia da Aguda in Sintra-Cascais Natural Park describes the beauty of this beach in verse. Down below the sea is throwing magnificently regular waves; seen from the cliffs the surfers appear tiny. Not easily overlooked with her flaming ginger hair is Filomena Aivado. Today Filomena and João Santos, founders of the Lisbon-based initiative “Hortas Ecológicas” are taking us on a stroll around the world of edible wild plants. This is part of a regular programme presenting indigenous plants …

Saturday 22th January 2022. “People hear the problem, they get scared faced with this problem and do want to change, but end up considering that it’s very hard and they won’t be able to do it.” It’s to counter this way of thinking that marine biologist Ana Pêgo works to raise awareness for ocean protection in communities. At the end of the day, change is within reach for each and any one of us. Step by step, we can all be agents of change. Known for being a woman on a mission, Ana the biologist sees marine waste as a …

Saturday the 15th of January 2022. It happened in 2016 and in 2018, then again in 2020 and once more now in 2022: every other year Faro hosts a meeting of the International Community of the Friends of Solar Cooking and Baking, by the name of CONSOLFOOD. This time the meeting is taking place between Monday 24 January and Wednesday, 26 January, and this time under the conditions of a global pandemic the event is held online at www.consolfood.org. Many people in developing countries still burn wood, charcoal or even rubbish on open fireplaces for cooking. The reason they do …