So here we are in the middle of the beautiful Ibiza summer season, with the usual high temperatures. At Casita Verde things are also hotting up in preparation for World Cleanup Day on 15th September.
After successfully passing through July without any major problems, we are now on full power with our local version of the popular World Clean up day event, set to take place on Saturday the 15th of September, just six weeks away. Having spent many hours in discussions and debates with other ecology organisations on the island, including the island government, we now have a working plan of action for this milestone event and can begin to get seriously involved in the logistic preparations we need to make in order to do a good job.
See these links for information about how you can participate:
Please join in the action plan by first downloading the app from the App store (search for ‘World Cleanup’) and together with your friends and family, begin your own mapping of Trash points, which will collectively give the cleaning teams a good idea where to go and pick up the garbage that needs to be removed, plus ensure that both the local government and the cleaning companies on the island are aware of just how much garbage is out there in the nature!
The NGO ‘Ibiza Limpia’, one of our most active groups in the Ibiza Fènix movement, has joined forces with Proartso and the Nature Project and accepted the main coordination of the one day event, together with Myrto Pispini who is the person employed by the Ibiza Preservation Fund, to coordinate the newly formed ‘Plastic Free Ibiza’ campaign which now involves all the ecology groups on the island, plus many other interested individuals.
As we mentioned in the last Casita Verde newsletter, the whole story of plastic pollution has become such a hot topic, nearly every country in the world is rising to the challenge of eliminating ‘use and throw’ plastic in an attempt to stop the enormous and disastrous effects that this material is having on our communal ecosystems and especially in the oceans of the world.
Here in Ibiza and Formentera, we aim to eliminate all kinds of disposable plastic items (plastic bags and wrappers, plates, cups, straws and eating utensils), by 2023. Our local island council (Consell Insular) has made a five year plan to ban the use of this material and is working with some of our home team and personnel from Proartso on this very ambitious project. Apart from participating in all the Saturday and Wednesday beach cleaning events organised by the Proartso NGO (please see our facebook page for full details), our Ibiza Limpia team are also planning to purchase 5000 more polyester bags like the ones we bought a couple of years ago and gave away to 1000 people interested in keeping our islands beautiful (see photo on this month’s banner). These 100% reusable bags will be given away to all the participants on the world clean-up day, plus members of walking groups trekking around the island and private individuals who like to help cleaning up on a regular basis. To buy 5000 of these excellent quality bags which will cost us around 4,500€, we’re hoping to raise some cash from our weekly fund raising events, plus add some money from our main Ibiza Ecologic account. We also plan to purchase a new Comarth Cross-rider electric car, like the one which was donated by one of our members ten years ago but which is no longer in service, so we can use it to continue cleaning up the country roads around the island and this will cost us around 10,000€. (Of course, if anyone reading this mail would like to contribute towards the purchase of these bags, or to help with the cost of the campaign in any way, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us, or simply make a transfer to our Ibiza Limpia account directly – see details below!)
Banco Colonya Caixa Pollenca Asociación Ibiza Limpia IBAN ES24 2056 0015 6810 0174 9025 SWIFT / BIC CECAESMM056
In order to be well prepared for this enormous venture, we intend to dedicate all the Thursday evening Ibiza Fènix networking events to raising awareness and organising the work groups for the World Clean-up Day. We’ll also invite our Thursday visitors to come out with us and practice mapping in the area of Casita Verde, so they will all know exactly how the system operates and can explain this to others. However, since our friend Cubanito, the director of our new Casita Verde in Granada will be back on the island from the 6th of August until the 14th, we’ll be making a special fund raising celebration for Casita Verde Granada on Thursday the 9th of August, so that’s going to be a great evening for sure!
This event will take place from 9pm until around 23.30, after the World Clean Up Day meeting earlier in the evening and will include our usual vegan dinner with natural juices, local sangría and our famous vegan brownies made with carob syrup.
Thursday evening awareness raising and fundraising events at Casita Verde are open to everyone, so please come along with your family or friends and join us if you’d like to get involved in our movement, or simply to meet some like minded people and enjoy having dinner in the nature!
Another very interesting piece of news this month is that Greenheart Ibiza has joined with the ‘Socrates initiative’ in order to help them fund many projects worldwide, including those of the new Ibiza Fènix movement here in Ibiza.
What is Sokhrates? Sokhrates (www.sokhrates.com) is the first social network created to help the planet. It unites people from all continents, races and creeds to promote a new conscience based on nonviolence and sustainable living. Its mission is to become an auto-sustainable source of funding for humanitarian, animal protection, cultural and environmental projects worldwide. In its first year it has already provided funding for a value of 56,000€.
It is currently incorporated as a Benefit Corporation in Delaware, USA and as a SRL Benefit Start-up in Italy.
Sokhrates is available on its desktop version since April 2017 and the IOS and Android Beta apps have just been launched (available for download in Google Play and App Store) and will be gradually improved in the coming months. An instant messenger app will also be available in the next month. Like in any other social network, in Sokhrates you can create pages and groups, meet people, post videos, photographs, audios and any kind of documents and soon, chat with friends.
With almost 2 billion users, in 2016 Facebook made a profit of 10.2 billion dollars in 2016, which remained in private hands. If Sokhrates, only reached a small percentage of that, it would have found a way of generating sustainable profits to be returned to the planet and its beings. All it takes is having enough users as to make it possible. So please register and start posting now!
In order to become an auto-sustainable source of funding, Sokhrates needs to gain around 3 million active users.They would like to contribute to the Greenheart project and the Ibiza Fènix initiative, thus building a relationship of mutual help. This is why they are calling for you to register now and start using it every day. Should you be interested on more information about Sokhrates, feel free to write to info@sokhrates.com
Plastic Planet workshop each Sunday @ Casita Verde
Due to the intense heat this summer, we’ve decided to suspend our weekly plastic art workshop with Emanuelle, until things cool down again around the middle of next month, so the next one will be offered on Sunday16th of September, just one day after the World Clean up event. For
sure we’ll have plenty of plastic objects to make some interesting sculptures with the kids!
Finally, the video we recommend for this month is Sustainable Eco-Village Built with
Reclaimed Material made by American filmmaker Dylan Magaster and is about Casita Verde Ibiza. Check it out on this link https://youtu.be/WRANa5pCdjM
If you have any questions about alternative lifestyle techniques, or want to know how you can be a more eco-conscious citizen, please come and see us on Sundays and Thursdays at Casita Verde, or on Saturdays at the Local products market in Forada.
You can also get in touch by email, sending your request to info@casitaverde.com, or calling our main office on 971 187353 / 608838190.
With warm greetings from Casita Verde, Chris Dews – coordinator