We had so many good entries in our My Green City book giveaway that we felt had to delve a bit deeper and read up on all those excellent green city suggestions before deciding on the winning entry.

Considering the book is all about promoting a more environmentally friendly lifestyle and bringing nature back to our cities, we ultimately felt that there was one city that stood out from the rest: Singapore.

A city-state with over 5 million inhabitants, Singapore is highly urbanised with sadly very little primary rainforest remaining due to an increasing population and fast expansion. However, Singapore is a city of green because the government once decided that parks and public spaces needed to be included in the city planning despite how quickly it grew.

The result is a densely populated metropolis that still has numerous parks, tree lined roads and a level of pollution that even the World Health Organization is happy with.

In February this year, Singapore was deemed Asia's greenest metropolis by the Asian Green City Index*. The study examined the environmental performance across eight categories: energy and CO2, land use and buildings, transport, waste, water, sanitation, air quality and environmental governance. Singapore stood out for its ambitious environmental targets and its efficient approach to achieving them.

The city also runs a Clean & Green Singapore programme that aims to inspire Singaporeans to care and protect the living environment by adopting an environmentally-friendly lifestyle.

Singapore was suggested by John Aspey who wrote:

"I think Singapore has got to be by far the cleanest city in the world, as a country they have been thoroughly educated about the importance of protecting the environment and their beautiful country, littering is totally prohibited and from a young age people are taught to appreciate 'keeping things clean'."

Congratulations John, please could you get in touch and let us know your address by emailing info[AT]shinymedia[DOT]com and we'll send the book to you!

Thank you to everyone else who entered - we will have more giveaways soon!

*Study by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

The winners of the 2011 Earthkeeper Fund have been announced. The initiative is a collaboration between Timberland and Project Dirt that promotes green activity in both London communities and nationally, and sees £10,000 going to the selected projects who will all receive funding of up to £2,000.

The winning projects are:

Brightwell Allotment Project: Is a joint enterprise between Brightwell Children's Home which offers short-term respite care for children with physical and/or learning disabilities and Merton Youth Justice Service. The fund will help plant fruit trees, buy compost, plant protection & tools.

Transforming the River Wandle Trust: The Wandle Trust has been organising monthly river clean-up events for nearly ten years. The trust enables local people to come together and work safely to improve their surroundings, making their community a better place in which to live. The fund will enable The Wandle Trust to buy wildflower seeds, 10 new PVC waders and to repair 40 of their older waders.

Together we can Grow, Jason Lee House: Is a 24 hour homeless hostel which used to be completely run by volunteers and still relies on many of them. They aim to prevent homelessness and promote the social inclusion of the clients into society. The fund will help buy a Greenhouse, Hedges, Tables & Chairs, Bulbs, plants and to ensure training on the above.

Homeless Hostels Food Alliance: The Homeless Hostels Food Alliance came about in February 2010 after homeless people and a staff member from the city's YMCA got together with 12 other hostels to address the food inadequacies in Liverpool. The Fund will cover relocation costs, stocking polytunnel with tree saplings (11 types), truck hire and a new irrigation system.

Dalston Eastern Curve Garden: The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden is an ex railway station line in Hackney. The space has been transformed into a place for people to relax and get involved in environmental workshops and to enjoy growing food. The Fund will help pay for a greenhouse, glazing, bricks and skilled trade.

City Farmers: City Farmers aims to create new growers, facilitate existing growing schemes and help local government engage individuals and communities through food. The fund will offer support for existing community gardens, seedling give-away days & mapping.

As well as funding, Timberland will help to promote the winning projects within its flagship stores. It will also offer its employees as volunteers to provide a bit of manpower where needed.

Previous winners include: The London Orchard Project, Pimp Your Pavement, Spitalfields City Farm, St Lukes Community Centre, Islington, Lewisham Hostel's growing project.

Whether you eat fish or not, could you ever imagine a world without fish in the sea?

London landmark retailer Selfridges has launched a new initiative with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) called Project Ocean through which the department store is collaborating with campaigners to increase awareness, inspire consumers to change their habits and to raise funds to help the world's marine life.

Launched today, 11 May 2011, the project is both a celebration of the oceans and a forum for conservationists to issue and urgent appeal for people to address issues of sustainability, overfishing and marine protection.

If we continue like today, we might experience a world with no more fish in the sea in the near future - and we don't want that!

Driven by this unthinkable prospect, Selfridges has given itself over to leading international marine protection campaigners and 22 environmental NGOs as well as high profile activists from the worlds of art, fashion, culinary arts and entertainment.
From today until 12 June Project Ocean will take over the store. Everything from its iconic windows, façade and atrium, to The Wonder Room, foodhall and restaurant will be transformed in homage to the ocean. The Ultralound will act as the hub of all activity so make sure you head down there to see it for yourself! Every Friday evening for five weeks, the Ultralounge will also emerge as the Dive Bar, and be host to musical acts and performances.

The 'green Oscars', The Observer Ethical Awards have been launched for a 6th year. In association with Ecover, the awards that recognise organisations, individuals and young people whose work makes day-to-day ethical living more accessible and achievable.

As always members of the public are able to nominate the best and brightest individuals, organisations or companies who continually strives to put the environment first, then visit www.observer.co.uk/ethicalawards to register your nomination.

Last year's winners include Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who beat Jamie Oliver and Joanna Lumley to take the title of Campaigner of the Year for his Landshare project.

This year's judging panel has top eco credentials, and includes Oscar nominee Colin Firth and his wife Livia, catwalk model Lily Cole, and adventurer Ben Fogle.

Voting closes on 11th March 2011.

Keep up with the latest Observer Ethical Awards news on Ecover's Facebook page.

Many of us have old mobile phones laying around the house, patiently waiting to fulfil their purpose as a 'spare' in case the current - more modern - handset is lost, stolen, or suddenly decides to take a dive into the cup of tea on your desk... Sadly most of these will simply sit in the drawer, gathering dust, not to be touched until you decide to have a spring clean or move house.

Have you thought about recycling your unwanted phone? Now you can do so and help the environment with Vodafone UK's new phone recycling phone scheme that will raise funds for WWF UK's vital conservation projects across the world.

The newly launched scheme is available in Vodafone's 380 UK retail stores, or you can post your old phone to 'Freepost Vodafone Recycling'; any phone from any network or manufacturer will be accepted. Sometimes old phones can be worth only a few pounds, but if you recycle your handset with Vodafone, WWF receives a donation of about £9 for each phone. The money will be used by WFF, who is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, to tackle issues like climate change and to help endangered animals.

And you can be certain your phone doesn't end up on a landfill as Vodafone refurbish and reuse all phones, or break them down for other manufacturing.

On Sunday February 20th, the Vegetarian Society will be hosting Meet the Manufacturer. The day-long event will bring vegetarian product manufacturers and consumers together.
With the vegetarian food market estimated to be worth £739 million in 2008, it is big business and manufacturers are keen to find ways to improve and develop their products. Vanessa Brown, Head of Corporate Relations at the Vegetarian Society hopes that this event will provide consumers the opportunity to provide manufactures direct feedback on what they want and don't want.

So far Redwoods Wholefoods, Goodlife Foods, Stoats, Goody Good Stuff, Rude Health and Liberation Foods have all confirmed their attendance at this free event. There will also be over 20 workshops running on the day, including demonstrations from the Cordon Vert Cookery School. Places in the workshops and demos are available on a first come, first served basis.

Meet the Manufacturer will be held at The Window Conference Centre, Islington, N1 8QG, an exclusively vegetarian venue, from 11am to 4pm, for more information visit www.vegsocapproved.com/MTM

If you didn't know yet, today is the first ever Green Britain Day. Started to try and get Britain greener by the 2012 Olympics, there will be events around our fair country to raise awareness of environmental issues and to convince us to make a change.

It all kicks off with a concert at The Eden Project headlined by Paul Weller, and featuring Brit award winning Florence and the Machine. For more information on tickets visit the Eden Project website.

Visit the Team Britain website for tips and idea for getting greener, from throwing a clothes swapping party, to hosting a neighborhood lunch. For more information on the events happening today go here.

Keeping up with the fast-paced world of greener living can be a struggle, but if you want to cut through the greenwash and keep abrest of developments, our Twitter feed is here to help.

There's always some new green activity or product I'm trying out that I'd love to share with you guys in a real-time basis, so if you haven't already done so, become our friend on Twitter and I'll gladly let you know which ones we love and which ones to bother with!

Related: Get atmospheric C02 readings on Twitter | How Green Are My Wellies?

Just a quick note to let you know we'll be carrying out some much-needed maintenance work on the site this evening, so hippyshopper will be unavailable for viewing. When we re-appear, we should be faster, shinier and greener than ever so I look forward to seeing you on the other side!

Here's wishing you all a very happy, green and groovy Christmas from all of us at Hippyshopper and its parent company, Shiny Media. We'd love to herer how it's going: did Santa bring you anything particularly eco-friendly this time around? Maybe you got a Tefal Quick Cup or wind-up radio. If so, you'll find plenty of feedback from other owners on this site!

Or, are you already shocked at the sheer quantities of waste piling up around you? If so, you might want to check out recycle now's Christmas recycling tips. Oh, and I do hope you cooked your sprouts the environmentally friendly way...

Finally, here's a little goodwill message to you all. Follow the jump for our totally paper-free e-card!

We've got an extra special prize on offer today: the chance for you to come and work with us at Shiny Towers, home of Hippyshopper and a host of other exciting lifestyle, technology, fashion and sport blogs. We have two 6-month internships available, starting from January 2008; one for a budding video presenter and one for a video production person. So, if you're a keen blogger who'd like nothing better than to make a career of your favourite hobby, this could be the perfect opportunity for you. Watch the video below from Tech Guru Susi Weaser to find out what you need to do:

The chosen candidate will get the chance to train and work with Shiny Media, the UK’s top video blogging team. This opportunity will allow unique insight into how we plan, script and shoot up to 80 videos every month. The Shiny Media videos are watched by an audience of around 50,000 every week, and this internship offers you the chance to gain skills that will help you develop your career in the video media industry. Click here for instructions on how to enter! All videos submitted will appear on our competition YouTube channel.

Grist has published its list of who they consider the top ten green politicians. Who makes the list? In first place is California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for his work in the state.

Other politicians include: London's own Ken Livingstone, New Zealand's PM Helen Clark and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Even David Cameron gets a look in.

Less well-known international players include Marina Silva, the daughter of Brazilian rubber tappers who founded the independent trade union movement. Partly due to her efforts as Brazil's Environment Minister deforestation of the Brazilian rainforest has decreased by 50%.

The Body Shop International is the first cosmetics retailer to commit to sourcing all its palm oil from sustainable sources. Irresponsible palm oil production is a significant factor in the drastic decline of the world's most ancient rainforests. The Body Shop will instead get their palm oil from sustainable plantations in Columbia.

Peter Saunders, Chief Executive Officer of The Body Shop, elaborated:

PETA will today stage a protest to draw attention to the plight of Terry, a chimpanzee in a Las Vegas Zoo. Terry is kept alone at the Southern Nevada Zoological and Botanical Park. PETA argue that this is in violation of the federal Animal Welfare Act which recognises the importance of social interaction in chimpanzee welfare.

Good golly gosh, have we here at Shiny Media got a competition for you.

Live Earth, the massive worldwide music event designed to raise awareness of global warming, is happening on 7th July. The London leg of the event is taking place at the magnificent new Wembley Stadium in north London. If we were to list all of the artists performing on the day we'd probably miss the concert, but suffice it to say they include Beastie Boys, Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Razorlight, Genesis, Snow Patrol, Spinal Tap, Kasabian and Metallica. The concert will also be available to view live online at www.liveearth.msn.com/concerts.

Tickets for the gig sold out within approximately 2 milliseconds of being put on sale, but thanks to Live Earth official online partners MSN we have a pair to give away to one lucky reader.