A clean, green holiday for $1.9b

Holidaymakers will soon be able to claim they are saving the planet, when they head to a Portuguese resort designed to pioneer environmentally friendly living.

An unprecedented green giant tourist resort - with 30,000 beds but emitting little waste and none of the pollution that causes global warming - is scheduled to open in three years' time near Lisbon.

The $1.9 billion Mata de Sesimbra resort, planned to cover 5260ha, is being launched by the conservation group WWF and British environmental group Bioregional, in an area scarred by disused quarries and diseased pine forests.

Due to be developed by a Portuguese property developer - and endorsed by the European Commission and the British Government - it is designed to replace plans for 11 traditional, environmentally damaging resorts in the area.

WWF estimates that the number of tourists visiting the Mediterranean will rise 50 per cent to reach 350 million a year in 2020.

The group is launching the resort to demonstrate how Europeans can reduce their "ecological footprint", the impact they have on the planet.

It estimates that if everyone in the world lived as Europeans now do, humanity would need three Earths to provide the necessary energy, resources and agricultural land.

The resort is modelled on BedZED in the south London suburb of Wallington, a former sink housing estate turned into a futuristic model of ecological living. Developed by Bioregional, the 82-home estate burns no fossil fuels and - through innovative design and energy conservation - uses half as much energy of all kinds as normal. It recycles its water and the families share cars communally.

Mata de Sesimbra will be powered completely by renewable energy, produce only a 20th of the normal amount of waste, and dramatically cut its use of water by collecting rain and recycling waste water. Half of the materials used to build it will have been recycled and half will come from within 50km, to reduce transport pollution.

Up to 10 such sustainable communities are planned in other European countries and the United States, China, South Africa and Australia.

- INDEPENDENT