A great memory and good concentration can be very useful at times, particularly when it comes to remembering where you left your keys or thinking of examples for when a sharp memory is useful!

Essential oils have been used as a natural therapy for millenia to improve poor memory and increase focus. Students in ancient Greece weaved rosemary through their hair as they believed it strengthened their brainpower and enhanced their memory. Cedarwood is another oil believed to support clear thinking as the sesquiterpenes compounds within it help carry more oxygen to the brain, stimulating increased brain activity.

Utilizing your sense of smell to create an association with a specific thought can also be very useful. Whilst studying, for example, you could dabble a touch of any chosen essential oil (say lemongrass) into a tissue and keep it close. By using the same aroma at a later date can help aid recall simply by association. Sage, specifically, is believed to improve recall.

Other essential oils found to have good memory-enhancing qualities are lemon, jasmine, peppermint and lavender.

Many carpets are packed with synthetic materials and can be a source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These not only impact the environment whilst being produced but also the indoor air within your home.

As with non-eco friendly paints the chemicals in unnatural, treated carpets will off-gas, that is emit, into the home over a period of time. There has been research into the health effects of this and it has been proven that respiratory illnesses and allergies can be aggravated by chemicals seeping out from the materials our homes are made of.

When it comes to carpets there are natural alternatives but it's important to take care when researching. 100% wool carpets for example may be doused in synthetic dyes that utilize a concoction of different chemicals to produce that pretty pale pink brown. Other natural materials include coir, cotton, jute and seagrass.

Ensuring the foundation or backing of the carpet is made from an eco safe material, such as natural latex, is also important as these are biodegradable and do not contain many of the carcinogenic chemicals found in traditional backing.

If you're big on the DYI refurb and have decided to lay the new carpets yourself be sure to use a natural glue to fix them to the floor. Most carpets are glued with adhesives and seam sealers that are packed with VOCs. Plant-based resin and solvent free latex adhesives are your best bet.

Natural, untreated carpets are not necessarily more expensive - another nice incentive. Check out the Alternative Flooring Company and Natural Carpets for some affordable options.

To keep your brand new natural carpets in pristine condition don't forget to use an eco friendly carpet cleaner. There's no rest for the wicked as they say... or is that the supremely good!?

Researchers from the University of Siena in Italy recently looked at the carbon footprint of organic wines compared to non-organic wines from two farms that lay just 30 kilometres apart in Tuscany. According to New Scientist, the researches measured the resources used to grow, package and distribute the wine.

Guess which wine came up trumps? One bottle of organic wine had an eco-footprint of 7.17 square metres, whereas the non-organic variety had a footprint of 13.98. The reason for this is that most of the operations on the organic farm were performed by hand rather than using oil intensive conventional methods of production.

Organic farmers are likely to better preserve their land's soil and water resources as they depend on the natural environment to get the most from their vines rather than relying on heavy chemicals to accelerate growth and boost capacity.

Grapes used to make traditional wines are heavily sprayed with fertilizers and pesticides. This is one of the reason's organic wines are better for you. Another is that they contain less sulfites (salts or sulfurous acid). Traditional wine makers add sulfates for preservation but wines that are wholly organic should not have any sulfates added to them.

Better still, organic wines have bolder, brighter flavours. Organic wineries don't tend to add flavours like oak chips, instead opting for very basic techniques involving yeast to ferment the grapes.

A number of studies have indicated that drinking one glass of wine a day (particularly a glass of red) could decrease a person's risk of heart disease. It's reasonable to expect the less harmful chemicals in a wine would decrease this risk even further.

A glass of organic wine a day keeps the coronary doctor away, perhaps?

Beyond meditation and relaxation CDs, we often look to songwriters and artists to chill us out and take us to another place for a while amongst the raucous trivialities of our daily lives. They can also motivate us to change our behaviours and attitudes by stirring raw emotions and pulling on our heartstrings. Every heart that has felt compassion and affection for someone or something has surely been moved by one of the billion or so songs dedicated to love throughout time. And its best music inspires us to treat one another better.

With this in mind more and more musicians are using music as a vehicle to communicate their concerns for the environment in the hope they will reach peoples sensitivities and move them to treat the earth with as much love as they would another.

Two of my all time favourite music makers are not only astoundingly talented but also environmentally conscious musicians. Californian Tina Malia has a brilliant song Heal This Land from her Silent Awakening album. If that doesn't shake your big green heart I'm not sure what will. ‘Let us walk together, take my hand, we will heal this land... if you could only believe...'

Brighton based, mother to be, Martha Tilston's Good World (from her Of Milkmaids & Architects album) is another that focuses on climate change and the impact we are having on this planet. Her lyrics are powerful and the chorus is so very simple but so very uplifting ‘it's a good world, it's a good good good good world.' If you ever get the chance to hear her live, this song, in particular resonates through the bones and stays with you long after the music stops.

Warnings that come by way of our musicians can be a whole lot more moving than via a newspaper article or activist's tongue. The hope is they will encourage more of us to take care of our warming planet.

In a world first, the people of the South American Republic of Ecuador have voted in favour of a constitution that gives nature - that's rainforests, rivers and air - legal rights akin to those given to humans.

Two thirds of Ecuadorians voted in the new laws which state nature has the "right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution" and mandates that the government take "precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles."

Under the new system if nature is damaged it will be compensated, just as a person might be if unlawful harm was brought to them. The laws give humans the right to sue on behalf of the natural environment or ecosystem that is damaged even if they themselves have not been hurt. Until now environmental lawsuits were people based where it needed to be proven a human had suffered injury.

Ecuador has many natural and valuable resources beneath its earth. The mineral rich soils and pockets of natural gas have been the target of multi-national companies entering it to exploit its natural resources for years. The country is still fighting US oil company Chevron in the courts. Texaco, a company the oil company bought in 2001, allegedly dumped huge amounts of crude oil and toxic waste in the Amazon over a period of twenty or so years. Heavily contaminating groundwater, the pollution has had devastating effects on the local ecosystem and native people. If Chevron is found guilty they could pay in excess of £8 billion in damages.

Even though the new laws will not help the Chevron case they could aid one of the most biologically diverse places in the world, the Yasuni National Park, where two ‘untouched' Amazonian tribes still live. The land is being pursued by companies wanting to extract the large reserves of untapped crude oil believed to lie beneath it.

As these laws are unprecedented across the globe there's no knowing what may result from them. The entire world is watching to see how they are used, and so we should, our earth's lungs are at stake here.