Environmental Commitment

At Sea Roots, we make an effort to minimise the environmental impacts of our activities. We try to promote energy efficiency e a sustainable use of resources, so we have implemented strategies at different levels.

Regarding ENERGY, we use efficient equipments, such as heat pumps for heating water and heating/cooling indoor air, LED lighting and well as efficient appliances. We have reduced outdoor lighting and use timers, which is also useful for night life, particularly nocturnal sea birds, who suffer greatly with light pollution.
We’ve implemented a solar energy system with energy storage, in order to produce part of the energy we consume at Sea Roots, with the unused energy being injected in the regional grid.
We’ve also adapted the buildings, as much as possible (considering they were preexistent), in order to make them more energy efficient, by putting insulation on the roofs and replacing door and windows with double glaze.
We always try to create awareness for the importance of efficiently managing energy and adopting pro-environmental behaviours.

About WASTE MANAGEMENT, we use compost piles, a worm farm and the help of our chickens and guinea-pigs, who consume food scraps and leftovers, greatly reducing the amount of organic waste produced. The compost is used as natural fertiliser in the gardens and vegetable gardens. There are different containers, in all accommodations, for non organic waste recycling, as well we provide information about proper disposal. Also, we always give preference to products of local or regional origin.

In what relates to WATER, we’ve installed water savers in all taps and we use double flushing mechanisms for the toilets. We collect rain water to use in the gardens and vegetable gardens and inform our guests about the origin and the quality of the tap water, encouraging their consumption instead of plastic bottled water. We always encourage guests and employees to use water sustainably.

About BIODIVERSITY, we don’t use any chemicals, like pesticides, herbicides or fungicides in the premises.

We keep the apiary as a way to contribute to the increase of honeybee populations and to educate about the importance they have in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystems. We keep planting trees and other different plants, in order to increase biodiversity in the property.

We also join the award “Noite com Vida”, from LIFE Natura@Night, which purpose is to protect nocturnal birds from light pollution and placed nest boxes in different areas of the property, in order to encourage nesting of endemic birds, which also play a role in controlling less desirable species, such as certain insects.
We also always prefer to use ecological cleaning products, with EU Ecolabel stamp.

Finally, for ANIMAL WELLBEING, all our animal are free range and we don’t use cages or confined spaces.

The animals have shelters where to sleep and are well fed, with no GMOs, as well as kitchen and garden scraps. They circulate freely and are able to behave naturally and socially interact with their peers.

As for the apiary, the bees aren’t artificially fed with sugar, all they eat is honey because after the harvests we make sure there’s plenty left in the hives, particularly for winter.