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Saturday the 4th of March 2023. The other day I received a strange phone call relating to the theatre review we published last week. „This is not what we agreed!“ – the caller shouted into the phone and into my ear. First off I increased the distance of the phone to my ear and replied that nothing had been agreed as to the review, as I don’t enter into any agreements when I write something. Freedom of thought reigns supreme, both for the theatre as for the press. Or am I wrong? 25 April forever! If you ask me, I …

Saturday, 18th february 2023. Nestle, Unilever, Procter & Gamble. This is the gamut of the top companies polluting our world with plastic. Do you know what actually happens to the plastics that you and I dutifully drop off at the Ecoponto to be recycled? Well, do you? At the moment, the play „Alice in the Wonderland of Waste“ (Alice no País do Lixo), staged by the AORCA troupe in Lagos looks at the issue of waste recycling using drama and dance. Last Tuesday I atched the dress rehearsal, for there can be no review without seeing the actual play performed. Which is why I …

Saturday the 11th of February 2023. These days, if you are thinking about building a house or restoring an old ruin you really will be forced to conduct a thorough study of your building materials and prices. Over the course of the past year alone, the price of construction materials such as steel, glass, cement and bricks increased by 30 to 40, some even up to 50 per cent. Add to this substantially higher interest rates applied to bank loans and more demanding efficiency specifications for new buildings, as well as the possibility of falling real estate prices. And this …

Saturday 21st January 2023. Many state schools in Portugal are currently closed, as the teachers are on strike once again. The plan is to pressure the Ministry of Education. This is the way they’ve chosen to pressure the Ministry of Education and force a favourable response to their demands. In truth those finishing high school in 2023 can more or less forget about sitting their exams. Let’s take one example: at the Poeta António Aleixo school in Portimao (who wants to live there anyway?) this works in a very perfidious way: the school, just like any other, is equipped with …

Saturday 14th January 2023. Today’s big news was this: humanity has crossed the threshold of eight billion. So what do the good teachers of Portugal do? What will we remember them for? That’s right, they’re on strike. Once again. This time the issue is their career paths within the state school system. They are striking because they are altruistically thinking of their missed prospects of promotion. Very funny. Just visualise this. Those poor poor teachers. Fair enough, they are not exactly in a good place. Entry-level salaries are meagre, not even reaching 1,000 euros. And this after spending four to …

“This is a book about our future.” These are the first words of “Earth4All”, published by the Club of Rome. Its subheading declares it to be a Survival Guide for our planet. Here are some quotes: “We all know that we have to put a stop to the extreme poverty affecting billions of people. We know that we have to resolve the galloping inequality. We know that we need an energy revolution. We know that our industrial diet is damaging our health and that the way we produce our food is destroying nature, triggering a sixth mass extinction of animal …

Per Espen Stoknes was born in Alesund, Norway, in 1967. He is a psychologist with a PhD in economics and chairs the Centre for Green Growth at the Norwegian Business School. He also spearheads the Business School’s Master of Management programme “Green Growth” and consults widely. A serial entrepreneur and co-founder of the clean-tech company GasPlas, he has also written several books and has been invited to participate in several TED talks. In Earth for All, at the Club of Rome, he belonged to the modelling team and the coordinating team who wrote the book. You can also find his …

Lesley Martin is 76 years old and is still teaching and practising permaculture. Her father was in the RAF, so she moved around a lot as a child, finding it difficult to describe where she comes from: “I was born in Wales, but my attachment to Wales is slight. I studied Architecture at university, but I really wanted to be a farmer…” After four years, she realised she absolutely did not want to be an architect and quit. This greatly upset her father, yet, some years later, he gave her the money to set up her own farm in Cornwall. …

Paulo Alves is 52 years old and was elected Mayor of Monchique on 26 September 2021. Before that, he worked as a bank manager at Caixa Agrícola, Banco Espírito Santo and Novo Banco. ECO123 interviewed the new Socialist mayor and his deputy, Humberto Sério, at a business lunch invitation. Transparency note: lunch was paid for by the Council.   Do you remember the forest fire in Monchique in August 2018? Paulo Alves: Yes, I remember it perfectly.   It was more than four years ago. The trial at Portimão Court was cancelled before it even started. The investigating magistrate didn’t …

Last Saturday, 30 July, ECO123 publicly presented its sprinkler system for the prevention of forest fires. There’s a long story behind this whole process. California has already been constantly devastated by fires, but now they’re also happening with alarming regularity in France, Australia, Italy, Germany, and, of course, Portugal and Spain. Over the last few weeks, there have been some extremely serious forest fires in Europe. Have we already entered the Torrid Age of climate change? ECO123 online has long been concerned about the theme of forest fires and our website offers practical tips about the steps we can all …