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Saturday the 1st of October 2022. Forests store CO2, forests store water, forests keep cities cool, forests ease droughts, forests protect against erosion. This is a list that could go on and on, at leisure. A forest that is properly protected is an investment in the future. By 2030 the EU wants to see at least three billion trees planted. That’s not bad. However, you can plant a lot of trees in eight years, but not a forest, right? Unless we were to plant a large number of Miyawaki forests. What are they? And how do they work? Akira Miyawaki, a …

Saturday 17th September 2022. Less is more. The particular, the fact of having less water available presumably spells more thirst. In times of climate crisis, living with this and managing this resource is turning in to an art form and an exercise in humility. All summer long, every evening I’d provide hundreds of trees with water. There is a deeper meaning behind this. The regreening of my little world is something close to my heart. Now the source of the brook on my property fell dry in the early summer. If it wasn’t for the municipal water I could say …

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 …

ECO123 is looking for someone to take up a leading position in its Advertising/Subscriptions team. ECO123’s advertising and subscriptions team is tasked with maintaining the cooperative budget and journalistic independence of ECO123 by selling advertising and subscriptions for ECO123’s digital and printed versions. ECO123 is actively engaged in pursuing digital transformation and following the path towards CO2 neutrality. Our cooperative and editorial team are preparing for the point in time when ECO123 will be published on a weekly basis, exclusively in a digital format, with a printed edition “Yearbook – The Best of ECO123” being published once a year in …