This week is National Vegetarian Week so we decided to kick off things with our top 5 vegetarian restaurants in London. We know that as we live, work and play in London we're a bit biased. So if you know any amazing veggie eateries outside of the capital that Hippyshopper readers ought to know about let us know by adding a comment below.

Hippyshopper's top 5 vegetarian restaurants in London

1. Mildreds

Established in 1988, Mildreds serves internationally inspired vegetarian food, all of which is made daily on the premises. The lively, yet intimate atmosphere is coupled with excellent value for money and a very broad menu that will keep non-vegetarians happy too!

When: Monday to Saturday, 12 noon till 11pm
Where: 45 Lexington Street, London, W1F 9AN
Web: www.mildreds.co.uk

2. inSpiral Lounge

This eatery is located in the heart of vibrant Camden. A unique concept, inSpiral Lounge combines personal and planetary health with the best view possible - right on top of Camden Lock.

A café, bar, events venue, you name it, inSpiral Lounge offers an amazing choice of ice creams, smoothies, cocktails and delicious food.

When: Monday to Thursday, 8am to 22pm / Friday, 8am to 2pm (late) / Saturday, 9am to 2pm (late) / Sunday, 9am to 23.30pm
Where: 250 Camden High Street, London, NW1 8QS
Web: www.inspiralled.net

3. Beatroot

Located in the heart of Soho, Beatroot offers vegetarian food that is full of flavour and wholesome ingredients at a price that won't break the bank.

They offer ten hot dishes that draw inspiration from around the world, together with colourful seasonal salads. Simply choose which size of container you'd like and your good to go! They also serve organic, fair-trade coffee as well as teas and herbals.

When: Monday to Friday, 9am to 9pm / Saturday, 11am to 9pm
Where: 92 Berwick Street, Soho, London, W1F 0QD
Web: www.beatroot.org.uk

4. Chutneys

A true find if you enjoy a good Indian. Specialising in South and North Indian pure vegetarian cuisine, Chutney's has a cracking menu and a really reasonable all-you-can-eat lunch buffet for £6.95/

When: Monday to Sunday, 12 noon to 11.30pm
Where: 124 Drummond Street, Euston, London, NW1 2PA
Web: www.chutneyseuston.co.uk

5. Vita Organic

Or Vitao as it's now called is as hippie as it comes. As one of the first restaurants in the UK to create and provide genuinely healthy food, Vitao use the best quality organic ingredients specially selected to achieve optimum health. Vitao caters for a wide range of dietary needs and choices, including vegan/vegetarian, macrobiotic, raw/living food, coeliacs, diabetics, those suffering from food allergies, or anyone just looking out for their health and well-being.

If optimised nutrition is what you're after, this is your place.

When: Monday to Sunday, 12noon to 11pm / Sunday, 12 noon to 9pm
Where: 74 Wardour Street, London, W1F 0TE
Web: www.vitaorganic.co.uk

Food waste. It never stops to amaze me how much food we actually throw away each year.

Personally I am a repetitive food waster. I go to the shops and get mesmerised by the colours in the fruit and vegetable aisles - usually post-work and without a shopping list - and end up buying more than I need or will eat over the next couple of days. What usually happens? At the end of the week I will find a half full salad bag or a lonely courgette at the back of my fridge, too far gone to even attempt to rescue parts of it. So in the bin it goes.

According to the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, UK households throw away 8.3 million tonnes of food every year, most of it could actually have been eaten. This amounts up to an average of £680 a year thrown out with the rubbish.

Why are we wasting so much food?

Well, a lot if it falls into the categories of 'cooking or preparing too much' or 'not using food in time'. How often have you not bought a bag of apples because they looked delicious, only to forget about them until you re-discover them a little soggy and brown. Not so appetising anymore, are they?

Another reason for food waste is simply because people's plans change. You might have planned to use that mince before its use-by-date tomorrow, but then a last minute call from a friend sees you heading to a restaurant in town.

And how are you with leftovers? In the freezer for another day or can't stomach eating one day old food?

How can I cut my food waste?

There is a group of people called freegans who live according to alternative strategies. Combining the words "free" and "vegan", Freegans avoid buying any products to the greatest degree possible. Instead of heading to their local shop entrance, they head to the back of buildings to rummage through the rubbish of retailers, offices, residences and other facilities to recover food and beverages, as well as other goods.

But if this is not your cup of tea, here are some tips on how you can reduce your food waste and perhaps even save a few pennies in the long run.

80 million Easter eggs are eaten every year with the industry making hundreds of millions pounds of profit. We get chocolate, they get money, a win-win situation. In fact Easter eggs can have a downside and it's not just the sugar-low, a survey by Friends of the Earth revealed that in 2007, 4,370 tonnes of cardboard and 160 tonnes of foil waste was created by packaging. Also, cocoa production has a long history of alleged labour rights abuses and deforestation in third world countries.

Here are our favourite choices of ethical Easter gifts, be it fair trade chocolate, environmentally friendly dyed egg baskets or hand crafted eggs by local artists in Kashmir, to ensure that you can look out for the earth whilst simultaneously gorging yourself on delicious chocolate treats.

According to a survey* by BBC Magazines nearly 60% of us are planning to get planting this year. The most popular vegetable people want to grow is the potato while the tomatoes are the most favoured fruit.

Apparently growing your own produce is also seen as a way of saving on expenses with 40% taking up gardening to save money. However a whopping 75% want to do it because they think the produce has better flavour when home grown. Now I don't have a big garden to plant potatoes in, or a shed to keep tomatoes. Perhaps I'll start with a herb garden in the windowsill...

Some of the main findings in the survey were:

Why people grow their own
1. Enjoy the process (83%)
2. Better flavour (75%)
3. For healthy eating (50%)
4. Saves me money (40%)
5. To know my food has been grown organically (35%)

Which veg are you growing this year?
1. Potatoes (65%)
2. Courgettes (59%)
3. Runner beans (58%)
4. Carrots (57%)
5. French beans (55%)

Which fruit are you growing this year?
1. Tomatoes (79%)
2. Apples (65%)
3. Strawberries (62%)
4. Rhubarb (58%)
5. Raspberries (57%)
6. Blackberries (57%)

Where do you currently grow your own vegetables?
1. In pots and containers (55%)
2. Dedicated vegetable bed (46%)
3. Greenhouse (29%)
4. In borders (26%)
5. On a windowsill (12%)
6. Allotment (9%)

What are the main reasons you don't plan to grow your own in 2011?
1. Too many failed crops (45%)
2. I don't have enough crops to make it worthwhile (24%)
3. Too time-consuming (18%)
4. Too expensive (10%)
5. No difference in taste to shop bought (6%)

*The Grow Your Own survey was carried out by 2,823 readers of BBC magazine readers in an online survey.

Environmentally friendly materials and packaging have been the source of many news stories this month: Coca-Cola unveiled plans to create a recycling plant to tackle UK's plastic bottle recycling issues; and new research show recycled cardboard might not be as good as initially thought.

Yesterday, PepsiCo - the company behind brands like Pepsi, Tropicana, Quaker and Gatorade -unveiled what it claims is "the world's first 100 percent plant-based, renewably sourced PET bottle." Boasting that the 'green' bottle beats technology of other industry competitors like Coca-Cola, it appears that Pepsi has won the race to take recycling and plastic bottles to the next level.

Pepsi's 'green' bottle is made from bio-based raw materials like switch grass, pine bark and corn husks. In the future, the company plans to also use orange peels, potato peels, oat hulls and other scraps from its food manufacturing business.

This is a welcome innovation and in terms of recycling biodegradable bottles, made from reused materials, will be a wise investment for beverage companies wishing to remove themselves from using PET plastic made from fossil fuels.

The pilot production of the new bottle is set to start in 2012, and upon successful completion Pepsi intends to move directly into full-scale production.

Thinking about what to get your man this Valentine's Day that it both romantic and eco-friendly? Hippyshopper has put together this gift guide to make your shopping easier, even if buying for Mr Have It All.

Despite the iPad taking the world with storm, there is sometimes nothing better than to curl up in the sofa with a good book. For anyone interested in great organic British food, check out the third book in Sawday's hugely successful Go Slow series: Eat Slow Britain.

Take a journey to forty-five of Britain's most special places to eat and meet owners and chefs who grow their own food, source only the very best local produce, and who prepare it all with love and flair - all from the comfort of your own home! Eat Slow Britain is published in collaboration with the Soil Association, and also focuses on some of Britain's best organic food producers.

Discover the flavours of British foods, and meet artisan cheese makers, master bakers, farmers and brewers, and get a couple ideas for your holiday next year too.

Available from the bookshop at Sawday's for £12.99 + delivery.

Photos: Sawday's

Don't know about you, but I love great quality food products. So for me a hamper full of fairtrade delights would be perfect!

The Fairtrade Foundation Festive hamper from Traidcraft Shop contains a selection of handpicked products from dedicated fair trade organisations including Zaytoun olive oil from Palestine, Divine chocolate with cocoa from Ghana and award-winning Cafedirect organic coffee from Peru. That's three of my favourite things!

Available on Traidcraft Shop online a large basket is filled with one each of the following:
- Traidcraft Fruit, Chocolate and Nut Cookies 180g
- Traidcraft Fairtrade Cashew Nut Snack Pack 50g
- Harry's Nuts Salted Peanuts 120g
- Divine Dark Chocolate after Dinner Mints 200g
- Dubble Milk Chocolate Christmas Puddings 90g
- Divine Drinking Chocolate 400g
- Fairtrade Sweet Justice Honey 340g
- Qi Organic Green Loose Tea 100g
- Cafedirect Machu Picchu Organic Ground Coffee 227g
- Palestinian Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil 500ml
- Valdevina Malbec 2009 Argentinean Red Wine 75cl

Giving a Fairtrade Christmas hamper to a loved one this holiday will help producers in 13 developing countries, so that they can get a little extra to spend on the necessities of life.

And if you quote 'HAMPER' in the online basket, the lovely people at Traidcraft are offering free delivery.

Available from www.traidcraftshop.co.uk for £49.95.

Photo: Traidcraft

As a vegetarian, Christmas dinner is not always the most exciting meal of the year. You're either stuck trying to make the most of various side dishes or, worse, tucking into the dreaded tofurkey. But December 25th doesn't just have to be for carnivores, there are plenty of great recipes that can make Christmas just as festive for the non-meat eaters in your life.

To help get you started on your holiday menu, the Vegetarian Society has sent us a collection of six recipes. With everything from a novel way to enjoy sprouts, pastry-free mains, vegan trifles, a veggie consommé and potato in the pudding, they are sure to inspire a mouth-watering meat-free feast.

All recipes are available for download here

Love Food Hate Waste is an iPhone app designed in Scotland to help minimize food waste.

The app has over 350 simple meal ideas that encourages users to look at food differently and find ways to reduce food waste.

Although similar to a number of other apps that asks users to in put `ingredients' they already have at home into the app to generate a meal suggestion, this app also offers a range of hints and tips on how to reduce food waste. One of the more useful tools being the portion size planner, aimed to help consumers avoid cooking too much.

The app was created as a revolutionary new step in an ongoing drive to combat food waste, as part of Scotland's ambitious plans to meet national zero waste targets. On average, Scottish households throw away £430 per year of perfectly good food, largely due to forgetting to use it or by cooking too much when preparing meals.

The app is available now in the itunes store and will be followed shortly by the Android app, which is currently in development.

National Curry Week 2010 is fast approaching and to get into the spirit of things, here are the 10 of the best products available to help you spice things up at home!

October 31st is fast approaching, and while it has long been big business in America, Halloween has now well and truly made its way across the Atlantic. A holiday hijacked by consumerism, it can be one of the most wasteful times of the year. Here are some simple ways you can reduce the impact on the earth, while still enjoying the fun this halloween.

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Yeo Valley is making its TV advertising debut during The X Factor tonight (October 9th) with its rapping farmers video. I mean with a name like Yeo Valley I guess they couldn't resist the rap connotation!

Great to see the organic brand - best known for tasty yoghurts - not taking itself too seriously and sending up the rap genre with silver cows on their Massey Ferguson tractors, rather than silver flying ladies on their Rolls Royces!

For more footage check out their YouTube, sorry YeoTube channel, at www.youtube.com/yeotube. You can see the full Yeo Valley rap below. 'Big up your chest, represent the west!'

If "Need...Coffee..." is a common part of your vocabulary, then you'll probably be aware of the ethical dilemma that comes with it; finding the nearest place for your caffeine fix, ignoring the coffee's eco-credentials, vs embarking on a time consuming search for something eco-friendly, whilst your dangerously low caffeine levels mean you're likely to kill anyone who gets in your way.

Thankfully, a five minute read of our guide below means that whether you're at home, on the move, or in the office, you will have the greenest coffee and tea at your fingertips 24/7.

If you're familiar with spending Easter weekend (and the majority of the following week) feeling seriously sick having consumed life-threatening amounts of chocolate, then you'll be glad to hear that this year you can at least do it without feeling guilty.

Fairtrade, organic and otherwise friendly easter eggs mean that you can stuff your face without feeling the slightest bit bad, although we can't do a lot about the sickness. So, we've picked some favourites for the ethical bunny to bring you this Easter.

Click the image below to start the gallery