Greenheart News - Winter 2025
- Chris Dews
- Dec 20, 2025
- 8 min read
Updated: Dec 28, 2025

Visitors to Casita Verde ask me all the time, if and how Ibiza has changed since I first arrived here in 1985?
Is Ibiza still a place where you can be whoever you want to be?
I’m certainly still doing what I want to do and being who I want to be for sure, but what about all the others who live here?
Of course the island has changed, but so has the rest of the planet!
After travelling around the world more than 17 times, on ships, or on planes, while I was in the merchant navy, I noticed big changes going on everywhere we landed.
Sometimes I was impressed, but most of the time I was very sad, as I saw more destruction of the natural environment and more disconnection with the planet on every visit. It seemed that ‘Business’ was overruling common sense and conservation of the native lifestyle was becoming something of a hurdle to economic growth, and was consequently rejected by most elected urban and rural planners.
So, did we learn anything?
Is it just like always, or are we slowly getting some positive reactions from local governments, which most of us can agree with?
Personally, I think we’re finally breaking down the barrier between the administration and the ever more informed public and although we obviously still have a long way to go, I can at least see some light at the end of the tunnel! This not only gives me more hope for the future, but represents a fantastic opportunity for further ‘joint compromise’ between government officials and non government personnel, who also wish to be part of a refreshing new way of cooperating with the local administrations.
Certainly, I’m doing my best to participàte in this much needed ‘Metmorphosis’ and will continue to do so, as long as my brain still functions and my body still carries me around.
In recent months, I’ve been invited to participate in several ‘workshop’ like meetings between various members of local NGOs and representatives from local government. In my opinion, this form of ‘working together’, in order to find solutions to some of the main environmental problems we face here on the island, is an excellent way to exchange ideas and critical information, so that all parties are better informed and can more easily understand how things may be improved.
Certainly, my participation in presentations and meetings connected to both the Alianza por el Agua (Water Alliance) and the Alianza Residuo Cero (Zero Waste Alliance), have been very pleasant experiences and I am enjoying being a part of these progressively more effective movements.
I’m also involved in a relatively new group, whose main objective is to discover and present bonafide information about the use of ‘Chemtrails’, which are becoming more and more visible in the skies above our little island.
This subject, which has previously been dismissed as a ‘Conspiracy Theory’, is being discussed by a growing number of concerned citizens, especially as we’d all like to know just what it is they are spraying on us and for what purpose.
For example, those of us who like to eat local non-contaminated natural food must be wondering if anything poisonous is falling from the sky onto crops, grown using ecological practices.
Right now, we are investigating methods to gather scientific data from rainwater samples taken in different locations on the island, so that we can present a well documented case study to both local and regional authorities, who will hopefully let us have some information about what’s really going on!
One member of our group has been in contact with Dane Wigington, from the American Geoengineeringwatch organization, which has many years of experience in this field and has enthusiastically offered to guide us with our studies.
With so many organizations to join and events to attend, if you’re awake and living in Ibiza, there’s certainly no reason to get bored!
Casita Verde Ibiza
After all the heavy rainfall on the 30th of September and more or less throughout the whole month of October, apart from completely reviving the very dry gardens, we were very happy to see that our beautiful eco-pond filled up quickly and was almost at the point of overflowing. However, our pleasant surprise was quite short-lived, as when it stopped raining, the water level began to drop around 20 centimetres per day, until it was almost completely empty.
Finally, after moving all the larger fish and many small ones into another place, I noticed a crack near the bottom of the pond. I can only assume that the extra weight of water this year was too much for the structure and something moved, causing all the water to leak out. I guess I'll have to remove all the mud from the bottom, then fix any leaks before we can let it fill up again. This will probably not happen during the winter and we may need to wait until the summer in order to repair the damage.
Another quite large job I’m doing at the moment is repairing the juice bar roof, which was installed around 20 years ago and which was slowly rotting away. This is a relatively easy job and I have all the materials ready to fix it, just as soon as my back will allow me to do some more heavy physical work.
Unfortunately, I worked a little bit too much while refurbishing the iconic bottle house office over a twelve day period last month and am now suffering with my usual back problems.
The good news is that I’m in no hurry to finish any of the maintenance jobs I have lined up for the winter months, as most of the other structures and garden areas are in presentable condition, so we can continue to invite visitors to come and be inspired by what we have built over the years.
Actually, I’m planning to organize more school visits, together my friends from the Alianza por el Agua, since the Casita Verde has so many good examples of how to collect, use and re-use all the water that falls on the centre. In this way we intend to slowly re-activate the Casita Verde as an educational showcase for more resilient and regenerative lifestyle techniques, offering visits dedicated to a variety of different themes, including the use of renewable energies, eco-building, water collection and conservation, organic gardening, and occasional workshops, or environmentally orientated retreats.
Meanwhile, the place looks more beautiful each year and I‘m still having a lot of fun keeping everything in good condition.
Casita Verde Granada
As Rey Aldana, the owner and director of the Granada Casita Verde is still working with Juntos Farm here in Ibiza until next year, his centre will remain closed for volunteers until he’s ready to re-initiate activities and continue with the original plan into the future.
Casita Verde Ireland
Béo hill farm has had a busy season and are currently taking bookings for volunteers from March-October 2026, so please look out for them on the Platforms of WWOOF Ireland and Work Away.
Joanna Sweeny, the owner of the farm is excited about the launch of her first book, ‘Wildcrafting Pathways’, due for release NEXT April and is doing a pre-sale offer of 20% off the normal sale price, using the code: WP20 at checkout.
This offer is valid until April 2026.
The book also features an interview with me, and tells the story of the Casita Verde philosophy. We’re looking forward to seeing you at the presentation event at the Casita Verde eco centre Ibiza in the spring of 2026 - Date to be announced.
Wildcrafting Pathways: Transformative Wisdom for a Regenerative Lifestyle : Sweeney, Joanna: Amazon.co.uk: Books
The Greenheart Guide to Ibiza
After being hacked by someone from Russia, who sent readers to a Bitcoin website instead of our guide, we have finally got it back on-line and working well, thanks to some timely action from our friends Camila Mejia and her boyfriend Jean.
Fortunately, they have also offered to help us maintain the website free from further disruption in the future, so hopefully, we can now continue to add new content, plus remove any entities that no longer exist.
We would also like to thank David Moss and his wife Marion from Ibicasa who have kindly included a full page of advertising for the guide in the latest edition of the magazine, as well as nearly every edition since we finished the guide two years ago. Now we can encourage more people to use it for finding environmentally friendly businesses and services on the island.
As soon as we’ve updated the pages, I’ll get in touch with the island council and see if they would like to add a link from their Tourism website ‘Ibiza Travel’. As well as this improvement in visibility, I’d really like to see at least the QR code appear somewhere in the airport and ports of Ibiza, so visitors can also enjoy our list of entities and companies who are playing their part in trying to make the island into a more attractive place for conscious people looking for a low impact holiday destination.
Ibiza Limpia and Alianza Residuo Cero
Since the Ibiza Limpia association has now joined forces with the Alianza Residuo Cero (Zero Waste Alliance), I will no longer be reporting our activities in this blog. If anyone is interested to know how they can join in the movement to clean up our environment, please take a look at the website from the Zero waste Alliance -
It looks to me like the local authorities have picked up on the idea of keeping our beaches clean too and are now leading the way in organising beach cleaning activities all over the island. For me, this is great news, as it’s finally been observed how a cleaner island attracts a more respectful tourism and so is also good for our main business economy.
I am of course still cleaning up the roads around Casita Verde, as I have done for many years already and I have to say that things haven’t changed so much with respect to the amount of garbage I find on my way to or from my home. However, considering that there are now more than twice the number of local residents and tourist visitors than when I arrived and began cleaning up, you could say that we are slowly moving forward. It also means that we still have a long way to go, if we want to reach our goals!
The good thing is that these days there’s much more interest in the garbage problem than there was when I began my Ibiza Limpia campaign and between us, we are working in a more organised fashion to find some suitable solutions.
When I first started cleaning beaches way back in 1987, I felt quite alone in my mission, as it seemed at the time that I was the only one who could see the problem. Nowadays, many more people can see we have a problem, but the question is, what are we going to do about it?
Finally, we can understand why we need to have the local NGOs working hand in hand with the local administrations, so we can all enjoy being part of some positive changes and this should make everyone’s life more pleasant.
If you would like to visit our centre for a guided tour during the cool season, organise a weekend conference about environmental subjects, or want to know how you can be a more eco-conscious citizen, please get in touch by email, sending your request to chris.greenheart@gmail.com, or calling our main office on +34 608838190 (English and Spanish)
With warm greetings from Casita Verde,
Chris Dews – coordinator
"Climate the Movie: The Cold Truth", Debunks Global Warming & Net Zero Narratives
The Crusade Against Carbon Dioxide | Professor William Happer
Ibizz kan¡an mehr al party
l'écologie il vous dit tout
Videos Casita Verde Ibiza
Videos Casita Verde Ibiza
Agricultura Regenerativa España
Zero Waste Alliance
Alianza por el agua de Eivissa y Formentera



Comments