Calling all yummy mummies looking for a safer car - safer for your family, safer for the environment (ok maybe not quite like the one on the left!). Green cars are becoming ever more accessible to the average household so it’s good to know what’s out there when you’re deciding to purchase the next family vehicle. We understand that not everybody can do without a car so we thought we’d look at a couple of the best for those who really do need one to get about in.

To figure out which are the most eco-friendly cars on the market it’s important to look at mileage, tailpipe emissions and curb weight - factors the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) take into consideration when they put out their greenest cars report each year. This year they selected the Honda Civic GX, which runs on natural gas and emits less greenhouse gases than cars that run on petrol.

GoinGreen Reva G-Wiz, NICE Mega City and Smart Ed are three great little electric that you can pick up for between seven and ten thousand pounds. The downfall is in their size - they’re not suitable for a 4.5 size family. Both the Chevy Volt (by General Motors) and Jeep Wrangler (Chrysler) are bigger sized electric cars.

Did you know that lips do not have oil glands? This is why they dry out more easily than other areas of skin. With winter - the dry skin season - here it’s a good time to rejuvenate summer-chapped lips and treat them with a bit of TLC.

One of the worst things you can do to keep your lips moist is lick them. This is big one for kids who naturally wet or suck their lips when they feel dryness around the mouth. The cycle of wetting and drying intensifies the process of chapped lips. Buying them their very own sweet smelling and sparkling, natural lip balms usually goes down a treat, and can be very useful for chapped lips, of course that’s if they use it.

In winter you can protect your own lips better outdoors if you cover your mouth behind a scarf or woolly jumper. On extra cold days most of us do this anyway but it can really help reduce moisture loss from direct contact with the cold dry air.

Lip balms with SPF protection will help protect from sun exposure on those crisp cloudless days and exfoliating with gentle scrubs will clean off dead skin cells leaving your lips feeling ultra smooth. Also applying an intense moisturising treatment specially formulated for lips will give your kissers a bit of extra oomph and nourishment.

A great natural lip treatment is the Smooch Penetrating Lip Salve by Barefoot Botanical with rose and cardomom, also the Organic Llip Silk by Essential Care is also very soothing and nourishing.

Selfridges have begun selling a luxury chocolate range named Credit Crunch.

But for those of us who can’t afford to buy our chocolates wrapped in gold ribbon it may be an idea to make your own. This raw chocolate recipe makes undeniably the best chocolate I’ve tasted in a long time.

60g grated cacao butter
2 tbsp maca
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tbsp agave nectar

Directions: Bring a small full pan of water to boil. Place a glass bowl on top of the pan ensuring the bottom of it does not touch the water. Add grated cacao butter and stir continuously. Raw cacao butter has a low melting point (38°C). If it is allowed to heat above this it’s molecular structure begins to change, which will affect its beneficial nutrients. Dip a finger in to check it doesn’t get too hot (should only be moderately warm) Once melted add the maca and cocoa powder. Once dissolved add the agave nectar. Then add mixture to chocolate moulds or ice cube trays and put in the fridge to harden. Depending on your taste buds you may wish to add a little salt and fresh vanilla bean.

Chocolate is far more comforting and uplifting when it’s made from quality ingredients. Maca and agave can be a little difficult to find so I buy my ingredients online from the Funky Raw shop where the raw ingredients are pesticide free and fairly traded from small scale growers.

Free Range Studios generally have a pretty unique way of getting their message across. Together with the Humane Society of the US the creative team have produced a music video to encourage people to vote yes for the rights of farm animals in California in the Proposition 2 ballot. A take on Stevie Wonder’s 80’s hit Superstition, Proposition the animal pop version, aims to inform voters on why they should vote for the abolition of cruelty to cooped-up pigs, hens and other animals that are kept in inhabitable pens. The new legislation is about stopping the practices of those factory farms that cut corners and ignore poor animal welfare for the sake of profit.

Let’s hope this little piggy gets his message across in time for the November polls.

Kids love to wiggle… they love to giggle… they love to create and they love to get their hands dirty. What better way to get them involved and learning about the world around them than to encourage them in the garden.As we head into winter it’s a great time to spark their interest, starting them out in the small league - indoors - growing seedlings in pots or sprouting bean seeds in jam jars. Growing bulbs like gladiolus and lilies are terrific in the cooler months’ as they need to be kept in a dark, cool place before planting.

Beans and Herbs has a huge selection of organic seeds. You can also buy ready-made gardens kits tailored to kids with simple directions and seedlings included. Rocket Gardens do a children’s garden version.

Helping kids to create Christmas plant gifts can be lots of fun too. Decorating old jam jars and making handmade labels with recycled cards from last year are great to light up those sprouting seedlings. Mini cacti and venus flytraps are plants younger kids are always fascinated by, making the joy of giving and receiving even greater.

So for all those children’s friends’ birthdays coming up why not give the gift of nature and help spread a few green giggles amongst the small folk.

Here’s a bit of news that that has reminded me, once again, why I buy organic food - an EU food monitoring report has found that half of all fruit, vegetables and cereals are contaminated with pesticides.

Apparently this is quite a significant increase from levels measured five years ago - and that’s not too long at all when you consider the mounting evidence to support the harmful effects pesticides have on our bodies and our earth. The EU report also found that five of the pesticides most commonly found in our food have proven to be ‘carcinogenic, mutagenic or disruptive to the hormonal system.’ PAN (Pesticide Action Network) Europe say that these are the worst pesticide results they’ve ever seen.’

In a special press release commenting on the EU food monitoring report, Elliott Cannet, Coordinator of PAN Europe said ‘a record proportion of fruits and vegetables are contaminated, while twenty three pesticides were detected at levels high enough to present an acute risk to public health - according to the EU’s own risk calculations.’

Yes, I think I’ll be sticking with the pesticide free variety thanks.

According to Re:Fashion there is three million pesticide poisonings a year and 20,000 deaths among agricultural workers. Why is this relevant to the fashion industry? 16% of global insecticides use goes on cotton crops and the majority of cotton is grown in developing countries. Cotton lies at the heart of the fashion industry. Poverty and worker’s rights, energy consumption, and water usage and waste during production, trade tariffs and barriers, fast cheap fashion… these are just some of the major issues Re:Fashion Awards are looking to address through their active campaign to ‘transform social and environmental standards in the fashion industry within a decade.’

RE:Fashion are the first awards to celebrate innovative, design-led, sustainable fashion. The awards night is tonight at Shoreditch Town Hall and everyone has the opportunity join leading eco fashionistas including Vivienne Westwood, Zandra Rhodes, Allegra Hicks, Katharine Hamnett and Daisy Lowe. Tickets are £37.50 for public balcony seats.

Awards include RE:Fashion Designer of the Year; RE:People Award; RE:Environment Award; RE:Africa Award and RE: Cotton Award.

With the market for organic textiles in the UK growing at 50% a year Re: Fashion is doing what they can to actively promote organic, fairtrade and sustainable fashion. It’s great to see the fashion industry taking more responsibility in turning our throw away clothing culture around.

And the timing, if plans are given the nod, couldn’t be better. The world’s biggest environmental body, International Union for Conservation of Nature, recently said that they believe at least twenty percent of all mammals currently face extinction.

The proposed National Wildlife Conservation Park is set to be 136 acres and based just north of Bristol. The cramped cages of captivity will be non existent at this spa for wildlife consisting of open land, moats and ditches for animals to roam about in. Materials required to build the sanctuary’s facilities will be locally sourced with the aim to be a sustainable development. It has also been said that food for the animals will be organic… they’d get it in the wild right.

There would be replicas of the Sumatran lowland rainforest, the Congo river, the Indian Ocean coral reef, Tanzanian savannah, Georgian wetlands, and a Costa Rican swamp.

But not everyone agrees with the idea. Animal activist Will Travers from the campaign group Born Free told the Independent last month that he believed the money would be better spent on actually conserving the wild rather than constructing a ‘tourist attraction’. He pointed out that ‘the Kenya Wildlife Service’s budget is about 20 per cent of the figure proposed by Bristol, yet they have to protect 8 to 10 million acres.’

Firstly cleanse your face in your normal cleaner to ensure it is as clean as possible.

Prepare your mask by mixing 1 teaspoon of the mask powder with 1 teaspoon of water in to a small bowl and mix until a smooth paste is formed. If you wish you can also add a facial toner for extra help in revitalising the skin (I used Dr Hauschka’s Facial Toner).

Before you add the mask it’s highly beneficial to steam the skin. To do this fill a medium sized bowl with hot water and add an essential oil or similar (as I was on a role with the good doctor I used Dr Hauschka’s Facial Steam Bath). Lean over with your face just above the water line, place a towel over your head and bowl and breath in deeply for anywhere between 3 and 15 minutes, depending on your skin type (3 min for sensitive skin, 8 for normal to dry skin and up to 15 for oil skin).

Immediately afterwards pat dry and apply your already prepared clay mask. Leave on as above for the steam bath (ie 3 min for sensitive skin, 8 for normal to dry skin and up to 15 for oil skin).

Remove with muslin cloth and rinse thoroughly. If in the evening apply your normal toner. If daytime apply toner and moisturiser.

My first run in with Dr Hauschka’s Cleansing Clay Mask was in SoOrganic’s Greenwich store when I was looking for a new face mask to try. To my surprise when I lifted the lid of the in-store tester (albeit a little clumsily and slightly tilted) a puff of brown powder misted before my face. Don’t worry, this doesn’t happen like some magic fairy dust each time you open a pot of Dr Hauschka’s Cleansing Clay Mask unless of course you are as ungainly as I am.

This unique little mask (as I found out later that night) does wonders for the skin and is quite fun to use. I felt a bit like I imagine a tribal woman of the Amazonia might upon brewing her skin soothing remedies. You might understand why by reading the method of application or if you ever get the chance to use it yourself.