• 

  • Greenheart

    El Corazón Verde es una organización ecologista internacional centrado en la popular isla mediterránea de Ibiza.
• 

  • Casita Verde

    Situado en un hermoso valle cerca de la aldea de San José en Ibiza, La Casita Verde es un modelo de centro ecológico que es operado por voluntarios y abiertos al público los domingos.
• 

  • Greenheart Music

    GreenHeartMusic es una plataforma de música con sede en Ibiza, España. Presentación de artistas de diferentes influencias que expresar sus conexiones con la naturaleza a través de su música.
• 

  • Guía Verde a Ibiza y Formentera

    Directorio bilingüe de Ibiza y Formentera que incluye grupos locales, empresas y servicios que llevan a cabo prácticas respetuosas con el medio ambiente.
• 

  • QL Studio › Websites Made Easy

    Quinta Linda es una finca de bajo impacto medioambiental y también un estudio de diseño web en Portugal.
• 

  • Greenheart Resonancia

    Un programa lúdico-educativo de experiencias prácticas estimulantes descubriendo hábitos sostenibles y espetuosos para afrontar las realidades del cambio climático.
• 

  • Green Ibiza Tours

    Nuestros Tours Ibiza Verde ponen a tu disposición vacaciones de Turismo Responsable en Ibiza ofreciéndote un completo programa de actividades.
• 

  • Greenheart Traveler

    Con el objetivo de promover el mensaje del Corazón Verde por el mundo, los miembros viajeros de la creciente familia del Corazón Verde redacterán blogs y añadirán las fotos de sus aventuras.
• 

  • Ibiza Gold

    El Proyecto de Algarroba del Corazón Verde rejuvenecerá una importante actividad económica tradicional, además de motivar a muchos propietarios de terrenos locales.
• 

  • Fundación por el Futuro
• 

  • Tienda Greenheart

    En la tienda Greenheart puede encontrar información sobre el consumo responsable y eventos ecológicos en Ibiza. Con nuestra propia gama de ropa Greenheart hecha de telas ecológicas y con consideraciones de comercio justo.

El blog del Captitán - August 2009

El blog del Capitán Chris se escribe en inglés. Disfruta!

Since we are now past the middle of the hot season here in Ibiza, It seems an appropriate time to take a look at the achievements of the year so far and make an action plan for the cooler months ahead.

As the 'Greenheart project tree' continues its organic growth, it brings new ideas and challenges with every new branch or leaf added to the overall picture. So far, our history shows us that the continuous efforts over the years eventually begin to bear fruits and we must congratulate ourselves that whilst we are forever expanding our horizons, we are also improving our foundations along the way.

The last year has certainly seen many changes of personnel in our core team. With those changes have arrived new operating concepts and economic possibilities as well as some subsequent down-sizing in the development of certain previously well established projects.
However, all in all, there has been a continual expansion of the main activity level and a more resilient connection with the local authorities on the island.

Casita Verde

2009 has seen the arrival of a new operating procedure for our successful Sunday meetings at Casita Verde, with the introduction of an obligatory lifetime membership for all first time visitors. Originally introduced to comply with local bye laws regarding food served to the public, the new membership rule has fulfilled more than just a legal requirement, as it has also given us an economic advantage and has ensured that we are much more in contact with our visitors than ever before. Apart from the possibility of receiving more than an extra 10,000€ per year in donations, we can now advertise any events or new offers to our expanding list of members and will eventually mean that we can use our great wealth of numbers to lobby local authorities with suggestions for improvements to our sustainable community performance here on the island.
(Membership numbers are presently up to 1800 on the 23rd of August, so it seems likely we'll hit the 3000 mark before the end of the year!)

Our wonderful cook Tara continues to organise the Casita Verde kitchen story, together with her youngest son Matheus and a variety of volunteers, offering our usual tasty Sunday lunch to the members. We also offer a special children's lunch menu since the spring time this year and there is a more organised children's entertainment program lately, run by Amanda Pi, who has recently joined the core team at Casita Verde. Amanda, a long time intimate friend of mine is also helping greatly with the preparation and presentation of Spanish documents concerned with permissions for public events as well as with all communications concerning the local authorities.

Apart from some basic system changes, we are also in the process of installing a third eco-toilet at the centre and thanks to our German technical team, Roland and Alex from Cologne, together with some very welcome funds from the Foundation for the future, we will soon be producing our own recycled fuel for use in diesel cars and with our new electricity generating system. Chip fat, the base element for our new fuel supply is sourced from several restaurants on the island, who have shown interest in supporting our latest experiment. Other technical improvements this year are the expansion of our internet facilities to include the Yurt, Tipi and Chill-out areas, which are now hard wired into the central communication system.
We also have an experimental vegetable garden, irrigated with gray water from the community shower and clothes washing area. The garden installation was designed by Dylan Efford, who also makes organic vegetable gardens in many paces on the island and has recently returned to help out at Casita Verde as general grounds manager.

With a record number of people on-board our little green ship this summer (up to a maximum of 16 members), I am personally very grateful for the installation of a new inside kitchen and dispenser area in the room behind the main kitchen. This was made possible when one of our directors Mike Macleod graciously gave up his accommodation and took residence in a very comfortable caravan donated by my brother Paul. This has in turn enabled me to reclaim the main house as a more intimate living area and personal office space, something which has been planned for many years already but which was impossible to organise until now.
In general, the number of weekly visitors reflects the general decline in tourism affecting the whole island but since we now have an additional revenue from new members, we are in fact economically better off than before.
Meanwhile, the centre continues to be photographed, filmed and documented by a wide variety of national and international media, as well as receiving many new visitors every weekend - in a nutshell, the Casita Verde show goes on!

Greenheart Music

At last, we are just about ready to produce our much waited CD4, having almost finished the music compilations and being well on the way with the graphic and editorial work being prepared by myself and Marc Osmo. Hopefully, our new Greenheart CD 'Into the Light' will be ready for production within a month or so and is planned to be launched at my springtime birthday party during late March 2010.

Greenheart Resonancia

After another successful series of school visits organised this spring-time by Pamela Seife and with assistance from Mariano Izquierdo, we are again in the planning phase for the autumn season. Since Pamela must leave Ibiza at the end of September and return to Argentina to help with a new family business there, we have asked Amanda Pi to carry on with the Resonancia project into the future. Whilst we are very grateful to the Foundation for the Future for their continued support with our Resonancia programme, this time, we are asking the individual local councils to sponsor the school visits from their own municipality, whilst the island council continues to offer a certain quantity of funding for transporting the children to and from our centre. So far they are showing some reluctance to spend money on this very necessary education offer but we still live in hope and will certainly do our best to persuade them to join in with our efforts.

Greenheart Shop

Our cute little Greenheart shop next to one of the busiest parts of Ibiza town continues to make ends meet and is certainly a treasure chest of beautifully made eco-orientated merchandise. However, I think we'll need to give it much more of a promotional boost if we'd like to see it booming as a successful commercial enterprise into the future. Perhaps with some new blood injected into the team over the next year, we can come up with a feasible action plan to accelerate the movement a bit!

Greenheart Guide to Ibiza & Formentera

This wonderful Green-business marketing device, first launched as a dual language paperback copy in 2004 after much dedicated work from many of our core team and a heavy financial input from our foundation, seems to have taken a position on the back burner of our projects file, as we have lacked any real resources and energy to revive it into the planned on-line version of our dreams. However, thanks to the arrival of Natalie and Mathieu, a dynamic Dutch couple, fresh from Amsterdam and with lots of green energy to spare, we are very hopeful that this little golden nugget is going to shine once again and even be transformed into a tidy on-line Greenheart family business.

Green Ibiza tours - Eco tourism project

This year the Greenheart eco-tourism project has moved towards the model of 'customised tours' rather than operating with set dates. This gives the customer more opportunities to come to the island during their available holidays without having to be limited to a set number of specific dates.

Green Media

The Greenmedia team are active with the Greenheart suite of websites management on site at Casita Verde, whilst the maintenance of the clients and system backend are looked after by Murray in Portugal, who is online now more regularly. Murray will be joined by Mike in October for further GMeditor system training and some programming tasks needed for the new GH Guide site. Meanwhile Mike here is aiming to bring into the GM fold our local Dutch friends Mathieu and Natalie, so they are trained up to be able to edit Greenmedia websites.

Ibiza Gold - Carob products

Our attempts to get the ibicencos back on to their land and picking up their carob pods is still in its infancy. However, this year has seen the introduction of a legally saleable product, cooked and prepared by Tara in the kitchen of Cas des Bosc near Ibiza town and sold under the sanitary permission of Carlos de las Herras, who is also the president of the local permaculture organisation. The official product has a new fancy label and the name Ibiza Gold is now a registered trade mark. So far, we have transformed and sold all the carob taken from Casita Verde last year (around one and a half tons) and we are presently in the process of picking some 6 tons of carob pods from Casita Verde as well as Can Beri, the organic farm of Jordi Serra in the adjacent valley.
This will form the base material for our next year of production and should allow us to market the carob syrup with much more confidence. A special team of volunteer carob pickers have been working already three weeks in the field and form part of a new course we are offering, to show interested people how to pick local dry fruit crops and to transform them into various food products.
Our by now famous Carob Brownies (an adaptation which Tara took from the Schumacher college Gaia cook book), are literally selling like hot cakes and so far represent our most presentable way to eat the syrup invention.
Together with Carlos, we are now invited to design a special factory kitchen space in the municipality of San Juan, so that both the marmalade business from Carlos and our own carob production can be correctly set up with some much needed subsidies from the local government.
Obviously, there's lots of work to be done on this project but at least we're out on the road with it at last and hopefully someone will come along to join us before too long.

Other projects

This year, we were heavily involved in providing the ecological content for the first yearly Earth-Run fund raising event in April and will participate in the Earth-dance fund raising event due to be launched on the 26th of September by a new organisation called 'Follow your heart productions'. (These two international events are celebrated in other countries too, so we are basically helping to join Ibiza with many international partners in a common cause, raising awareness and much needed funds for a variety of charity based organisations).
We have also been cleaning the beach at Cala Conta each Sunday evening since our Earth celebration event on June 21st and expect to continue this program until mid October at least. Together with Follow your heart productions, we plan to present a bi-monthly eco-conscious event on different urban beach locations around the island throughout the summer months next year, and if all goes well with government permissions and sponsors etc, to expand this program into the future.

Our involvement with the recently initiated local Agenda 21 program here on the island has given us some ideas how we can be more effective in enhancing our presence here. As we are already participating in Agenda 21 forums in Ibiza town and San Antonio (the only two town halls currently running such forums), we should be able to use our growing membership numbers to insist on including suitable new initiatives towards a more sustainable local community and try wherever possible to integrate our regular environmental activities into local government strategy.