Track down a rural hideaway with The Soil Association's new Holiday Organic web directory.
All produce foods to the Soil Association's organic standards and the nature of organic farming means they are likely to have a good mix of animals and crops, setting the scene for a fab rustic retreat.
Browse your way down country lanes and through the gates of nearly 200 working organic farms welcoming visitors to tied cottages, farm buildings, campsites and the odd yurt.
Some may give the energetic a chance to get their hands dirty and most will offer a taste of their produce, whether it be breakfast or a full meal from the field, kitchen garden or orchard.
Visitors can browse Holiday Organic by English region, Scotland & Wales, with a particularly strong showing for England's West Midlands and South West, home to a quarter of the country's organic farms. To explore, go to Holiday Organic in the Take Action area of the Soil Association website: www.soilassociation.org.
So, summer is just around the corner....Well, not quite, but post-Christmas is definitely an acceptable time to start getting excited about it without everyone thinking you're insane. Want to see some eco-friendly holiday ideas to inspire your daydreaming? CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW
How do you convert your car to run on mushed-up seaweed? It's not something your average man in the street is wondering, but fortunately some intrepid American fuel-pioneers are, writes ShinyShiny's Anna Leach.
Fed up with the oil industry and pollutant effects of burning petrol, Josh Tickell had been experimenting with biofuels and successfully converted a car to run on waste cooking oil. After concerns that using plant oil created food shortages, they turned their attention to algae. And they reckon that biodiesel created by algae is the answer to the fuel crisis. Well that'd be nice.
In a mini documentary on ViceTV, America's alternative fuel guy shows how you can convert your car to run on alternative fuel. Adding a battery-pack in the boot seems to be the first step, though getting hold of algae gasoline seems to be trickier. Though a group called Solazyme are growing giant vats of algae in the Midwestern desert with an eye to creating biofuel, it's not exactly widely available. Apparently you can condense the oil-making process from 150million years to 3 days. Excellent.
Until some of that seaweedy power liquid ends up in your local fill-up station, it's going to be hard to embrace the algae lifestyle, but it's really interesting. Check out the ViceTV doc below:
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) might sound like a fairly dull organisation. But the group, which pumps around £800 million a year into research and development in the physical sciences, certainly boasts a few people with a sense of adventure.
Take one of its flagship projects for this year - a racing car made of vegetables which runs on chocolate. Created by boffins and students at the University of Warwick, the car is designed to highlight how even the most carbon guzzling things can be greenified.
The Formula 3 racing car is capable of reaching top speeds of around 125MPH despite being composed of a medley of vegetables. The steering wheel is created from a polymer derived from carrots and the bodywork is a mixture of starch and flax fibre. Even the steering wheel lubricants are plant based.
Best of all is the fact that it runs using a biodiesel engine which runs on fuel extracted from chocolate and vegetable oil.
There's more information on the project and the organisation here.
Thanks to £30 million of Government funding, the UK is about to witness thousands more charging points for electric and plug-in hybrid cars. The money is being invested as part of a new 'Plugged-In Places' initiative with British companies being encouraged to get behind the scheme.
Says Business Minister Pat McFadden: "The move to lower carbon forms of transport is a turning point for the automotive industry, opening up new opportunities for existing UK automotive companies and with the potential to create new jobs and new industries. I urge British companies to get involved and seize these new opportunities for growth and jobs."
Sainsbury's plans to be at the forefront of the electric car revolution. The supermarket chain recently announced that nine stores (in Beckton, Camden, Chiswick, Cromwell Road, East Dulwich, Greenwich Peninsula, Islington, North Cheam and Sydenham) now have charging points for electric vehicles with a further two (in Wandsworth and Whitechapel) opening very soon. This will ensure that London's electric drivers will only ever be a few short miles from the nearest charging point.
The Cheeky girls were there, and so was our sister site ShinyShiny's Anna Leach. We managed to push celebs aside and get a look at Peugeot's new electric car the BB1: branded as half scooter, half car, it fits four people, has handlebars instead of a steering wheel, and the cutest squished windscreen you ever saw. http://www.bb1-peugeot.com
It's all about zero-emission cars at this week's Tokyo Motor Show. With no US and European car manufacturers present, all eyes will be on Japanese car manufacturers, many of which be displaying their electric concept cars.
Toyota - the world's biggest car maker by volume - has said it aims to launch an electric vehicle by 2012 and will display a new version of its electric concept car, the FT-EV II, at the show. And from Honda there's the EV-N, a cute electric concept car that can store a one-wheel personal mobility device inside its door.
At the Tokyo Motor Show Nissan will also put its electric car, the Leaf on display to the public for the first time. The medium sized hatchback, which will go on sale in late 2010 in Japan, is billed as"the world's first affordable, zero-emission car." It can travel more than 160 kilometres (100 miles) on a single charge, at a top speed of 140 kilometres per hour.
Nissan will also show off a futuristic electric concept car that leans to the side when going around bends. Just 1.1 metres (3 feet 7 inches) wide, the Landglider (pictured) seats two people, one in the front and one in the back. Inspired by motorbikes and glider aircraft, it has tilting wheels that enable it to lean by up to 17 degrees.
According to estimates from JP Morgan, hybrid vehicles are estimated to account for about 13% of global sales by 2020 but electric cars will represent just 1% or 2% in that year. "What electric cars have a problem with is lack of a network of charging facilities like the current gasoline stations," Toyota President Akio Toyoda said at a luncheon meeting at the Japan National Press Club earlier this month.
Meanwhile back in the UK, transport secretary Lord Adonis has announced that the North-East is to benefit from the installation of up to a thousand electric charging points over the next two years, writes Paul Ridden.
Locations in Gateshead and Newcastle have been earmarked for the roll-out which is due to kick off in the coming months. Some of the forty points that will initially appear next to public buildings and shops, on kerbsides and in car parks as part of the pilot scheme will be free, with others requiring users to pay an annual subscription for unlimited use.
Track down a rural hideaway with The Soil Association's new Holiday Organic web directory. 
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