Having read Giles Coren's outstanding review, I was hugely excited about my visit to Acorn House, the first restaurant in the UK to be conceived with environmental sustainability at its core, and is being hailed as 'the most important restaurant to open in London in the past 200 years'. This was to be no ordinary lunch break; I was going to experience the cutting edge of catering!

From the outside, Acorn House is an unassuming but smart modern restaurant, sitting smack-bang in the middle of Grays Inn Road, one of London's busiets and most polluted thoroughfairs. But the contrast on entering is striking: everything about this place is green, from the food to the very materials it's built from. And on closer inspection, they've got all bases covered, with eco lighting from EcoTricity, all bottled water coming from British sources, sustainable Norwegian wood tables and only seasonal food on the menu, which changes every month.

I've bought several reusable plastic bags over the last year and, some how, I've never got round to actually reusing them. Instead they've been folded neatly and left in the kitchen. Utterly useless. However, at the beginning of last week as I popped into Asda's for my daily 'I've forgotten something from the weekly shop' catch up, I remembered to pick one up. The day before, you see, I'd used two plastic bags and promptly thrown them in the bin afterwards. I realised if I did that five times a week on random items then I could use up to 10 bags per week. And if I used that volume every week, it was entirely likely I could use 520 plastic bags per year.

If most homes in Britain bought one of these Bye Bye Standby energy saving kits, we'd all save around £37 a year. Big deal, you might well think, but the green implications a far more impressive.

Currently, by leaving PCs, televisions, printers, coffee machines and so forth on standby, we are collectively wasting the equivalent output of two and a half power stations, while are gadgets to absolutely nothing except blink at us. Installing a gadet that makes it easy to switch them off with one press of a button could prevent all of that waste. Susi Weaser took one home...

It seems like every email newsletter I get now has a reminder at the end to consider the planet before printing it, which makes me feel good about all the years I spent haranguing family and colleagues for wasting resources printing every dull four-line missive they received.

It never occurred to me that I might have to start telling people not to print text messages.

Hippyshopper is growing by the day, and now there's a small army of us on board, you can expect to see more green products and services being thoroughly put to the test by our eco-savvy reporters. We'll do our best to guide you through what's become a green consumer jungle, and would love to hear your feedback on what you want to see reviewed in future.

To kick off the series, we asked Hippyshopper writer Ben Keningale to send his experience of Riverford Organic. Riverford is one of the best known suppliers of organic 'veggie boxes' in the UK, and as one of the largest box delivery schemes, grows over 85 different vegetables. Here's what Ben made of the service.

In my continuing search for the perfect skincare range, I've been trying out the Rosa Fina range from Barefoot Botanicals. The company creates organic skincare products that are choc full of essential oils and natural plant extracts, avoiding petrochemicals and other potentially harmful substances. The Rosa Fina products are produced using "oil expressed from the macerated seeds of a wild rose growing only in the Chilean Andes" (so not good news for your global footprint, I'm afraid). According to the blurb, "Rosa Mosqueta oil... has been used by the indigenous population for all kinds of skin problems related to ageing" and the products are touted as being good for wrinkles, stretch marks and scars. So how did I get on with them? Find out, after the turn.

The Toxic Consumer; How to reduce your exposure to everyday toxic chemicals. Karen Ashton and Elizabeth Salter Green. Impact Publishing Ltd.

They are nasty and they are everywhere - chemicals, I mean.

Chemicals used in everyday products - to make things non-stick, bendy, flame retardant or stain resistant - are implicated in a staggering range of health issues including birth defects, lower sperm counts and rising rates of certain cancers.

I don't know about you, but I reckon it might be good to limit my exposure to these nasties, and this book gives advice on how.

The Truth About Garden Remedies: What Works, What Doesn't and Why
by Jeff Gillman (Author), £9.89

We've all heard dozens, probably hundreds, of home gardening remedies that "really work".  Well, Jeff Gillman has taken hundreds, maybe thousands, of these remedies and brought in the science.  Does putting ammonia in plant water provide helpful extra nitrogen?  (Not unless you know what you're doing, and even then, probably not.)  How about gravel for drainage?  (No.)  Do Hydrogels mean you don't need to water as often?  (No.)  Do ground brussels sprouts control weeds?  (No.)  Does dosing your plants with B1 help?  (Only the tiniest plants, such as cuttings in scientific test tubes.)  Gillman does an excellent job of explaining what the remedy supposedly does, what it really does, and a round-up paragraph of "what it means for you".  The book is packed with sensible explanations of why you shouldn't do most things your grandmother told you - but smile, and be nice about it.  Only flaw?  I finished it and wanted more.  4/5.  [GT]

The Truth About Garden Remedies: What Works, What Doesn't and Why

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Conventional cotton farming uses only about 3% of total global farmland, yet consumes 25% of all pesticides. Vote with your purse and buy organic cotton wherever possible.

We've shown you organic undies, organic cotton soft toys, and organic cotton shopping bags. Now you can make sure even your kitchen cloths are organic, too.

Verdante dish cloths are made from 100% organic cotton. They are pleasingly thick and soft, so much so, in fact, that I immediately cut mine in half to make two very useable cloths from one.

Melissa Corkhill, editor of The Green Parent magazine and mother of two, has written an informative guide to parenting in an ecologically aware way.

It's a slim volume, but is chock-o-block with advice, information and tips for every stage of parenting - from pregnancy and birth through to parenting teens.

The book favours short pieces and snippets of information, set out in an easy-to-use style, so it is great for sleep-and-time deprived new parents to dip into.

Dryer Balls are small rubbery spheres covered in nodules. They promise to reduce drying time by up to 25%, reduce creasing of fabrics and increase softness - without the use of disposable dryer sheets.

Now, my tumble dryer rarely gets used. I bought it in a fit of panic when I moved to Scotland, having heard that the weather could be - ahem - challenging. It is a Hotpoint combination washer-dryer and an average mixed load takes two hours to dry. Not an efficient use of energy, you could say.

Feeling, I'll admit, sceptical, I chucked the Dryer Balls in the machine with a mixed wash of clothes and one bath towel.

The clothes were significantly less creased, the bath towel was properly dry and, here's the shock, soft and fluffy. Plus, the load took fifteen minutes less than usual. One ex-sceptic reporting for laundry duty...

Dryer balls cost £9.99 from Woolworths or JMLDirect and are reusable.

Related stories: Dryer Balls

Last week I drew your attention to a story about supermarkets selling their green credentials.  One of the things I mentioned was how your local grocer was likely to be hugely more energy-efficient than the supermarket, and someone very kindly drew my attention to curiously-cased theSHOPPERSbible.com.

theSHOPPERSbible was set up by a businessman who goes by the delightful name of David Croissant.  His favourite local shop (we're not told what it sold but I like to think it was a boulangerie) shut down after competition from the larger stores nearby proved too much for it.  As a result, he decided to fund and promote the creation of theSHOPPERSbible, which acts as a kind of portal for independent retailers.  Shoppers can use the site to search for local shops for local people in their local area, and use the site to contact the retailers directly if they have any questions.

Thanks to David Attenborough, the BBC, and a 40-strong camera crew, I have seen lions hunting elephants, migrating Mongolian gazelle and, last night, a parasitic fungi that feeds on its insect host before bursting out of its body, Alien-style.

If you didn't catch episode eight of the wonderful Planet Earth - and, frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself - you get a second chance on Saturday night (25 November, 7pm, BBC 2).

And if that isn't enough, a five-disc DVD box set, featuring the entire series (plus extras) is released on November 27. Planet Earth is a spectacular achievement; five years in production, over 2000 days in the field and across 200 locations.

Put it on your Christmas list; you deserve it.

Related stories: TV Scoop

Venture Foods has added two new organic, fairtrade and vegan confectionery bars to their range, bringing the total up to six.

My favourite's the 'Swiss Dark Chocolate Bar with Mint Crisps', a dark chocolate (65% cocoa solids) bar containing crispy mint crystals.  It's a perfect guilt-free after-dinner alternative to the likes of Nestlé's Matchmakers or the Cadbury Schweppes-owned Green & Black's range.  This bar tastes so good, it didn't even occur to me that it was specially formulated to make it suitable for vegans.

I tend to shy away from white 'chocolate' but the Premium Organic White Bar is similarly tasty.  It's not at all obvious that Venture Foods use rice milk as a dairy alternative and it's a great choice for vegans who prefer white chocolate.  (Back-of-the-pack obsessives can see the ingredients list here.)

Natural Remodeling for the Not-So-Green House
by Kelly Lerner and Carol Venolia, published by Lark Books, £11.77

Starting with a non-organic product of any kind and trying to make it green is always difficult, and a house is one of the most difficult (as well as most common). Result: this book was received with great enthusiasm. Contains lots of useful definitions for the novice would-be hippyshopper and a mix of obvious (yes, we know cooking with lids on the pots makes you use less heating energy) and non-obvious (putting the bathtub by a window really does make the bathroom look larger). Unfortunately, too much seems contingent on large design decisions (information on where to put windows implies one intends to move them) where more emphasis on small changes with good bang-for-the-buck impact would've been appreciated. However, it is called Remodeling - not, say, Tweaking. On the whole it's a slightly strange mix of specialized information (tables of the various virtues of different flooring, wall finishes, etc) and overly simplified (indictions to 'pick energy efficient windows'). Nonetheless, if you are undertaking a renovation of any kind it's worth at least a look, and at only £11.77, most likely worth buying. 3/5. [GT]

Natural Remodeling for the Not-So-Green House

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