If you’ve been one of the many who has chosen to go with the plastic Christmas tree option, because you think it’s better for the environment, here’s some food for thought. Plastic trees might not be all that after all – the reality is that most plastic trees end up on landfill sites, where they take hundreds of years to degrade as pointed out by ethical living journalist Lucy Siegle.

According to Siegle, one acre of Christmas trees produces enough oxygen for 16 people to live on for a year before they are cut. You just need to get the right type of tree. So here’s what to do:

1) Make sure your tree is as locally grown as possible. There are 400 UK registered with the British Christmas Tree Growers Association
2) www.xmastreesales.co.uk in Shropshire avoids unnecessary harvesting of trees on a sustainable plantation.
3) And go for the best-looking trees, as tall healthy looking trees tend to have been grown in good conditions – on good soil with lots of space between them.
4) Buying a tree with roots means you can replant it in the garden. To do this successfully you need to find a tree with a good root ball. Plant the tree with lots of space around it and make sure you continue to water it (many trees die in summer as people forget to do so).

No doubt kids’ Christmas lists this year, as every year for the last few decades, will be calling for the latest must-have Barbie and Action Man equivalents for 2008. But with ‘toxic toys’ having hit the headlines this year – Mattel recalled more than 19 million toys manufactured in China earlier this year for a range of reasons, from unsafe magnets and lead-based paint – and the increasing number of unsustainable plastic toys and those with electrical components, it does make you want to seek out more eco-friendly alternatives.

Ethical columnist Lucy Siegle muses on just this and believes that the toy industry is capable of reform: in 1997 study of 71 toys from 17 countries found they contained high levels of phthalates (a plasticiser linked to childhood asthma and reproductive disorders). Emergency legislation was brought in to ban phthalate use in baby products such as teething rings. However, phthalates can still be used in toys for over-threes, except in California, where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has banned them in all children’s’ products from 2009.

Short of moving to California and until legislation follows suit here, the best thing to do is to track down some ethically sustainable toys for the little ones. You can find toys with certified ethical standards at www.toys-to-you.co.uk and wooden toys at www.holz-toys.co.uk. And at Your Tomorrow, we’ve got a great cardboard playhouse, free from bleaching chemicals and plastics and sourced from recycled materials and is biodegradable – perfect for playing house or doubling up as a space capsule! We also have an air engine racer which is powered with a hand pump and handcrafted papier mache animals, made from recycled paper, which the kids can paint and decorate themselves. Enjoy!

Need some standby ideas for prezzies? Well, there’s nothing more cosy than settling down with a good book after a delicious Christmas dinner. So here’s our pick of the best eco and organic themed books around.

The Organic Directory 2007-2008
It’s all very well deciding to go organic in all aspects of your life, but more often than not you’ll find yourself up against a brick wall when you realize you have no idea who does local veg boxes in your area. Or where the nearest farmers’ market is or where can you possibly find organic baby food? This guide is brilliant for anyone interested in pursuing an organic lifestyle. It provides names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and websites of retailers, producers, wholesalers and manufacturers of organic goods in the UK.

Organic Places To Stay In The UK
Get planning next year’s hols this Christmas! From camping to luxury hotels, this book covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Accommodation is split by county and is full of essential details such as organic meals, how far to the nearest pub, pet friendly bed and breakfasts and where’s good to stay with children.

The Little Green Book of Big Green Ideas
With more than 120 facts and handy hints and tips, this guide is perfect for anyone who wants to save the world but just doesn’t know where to start!

Save Cash & Save The Planet
Just what we all want to know – how to go green and go easy on the purse! With advice on how to make a difference as a citizen, shopper and voter this book includes simple tips on how to save energy, detox your house and be a smarter shopper.

Recycle
Want a stylish and unique home? Then go down the salvage route with interior designers Moira and Nicholas Hankinson who are masters of fashioning the coveted from the cast-off. 60 practical projects for the home and garden.

Shopping for Vintage: The Definitive Guide to Vintage Fashion
One of the most ethical ways to shop for fashion is to buy second hand or vintage. But if you don’t know your John Galliano from your Prada then this book will help turn you into the most clued up vintage fashionista around.

Green Is The New Black
Not just a compendium of where to buy ethically produced clothes, this book tells you how to shop ethically on the high street, how you can create your own DIY style and even how to organise a clothes ’swishing’ (swapping) party with your friends.

Is it ever too soon to get ready for Christmas? As ever, it seems the onslaught of baubles is getting earlier and earlier. But if you can’t fight ‘em, join ‘em! And what’s wrong with getting in to the Christmas spirit and making sure you’ve got a head start on prezzies and stocking-fillers. With Christmas being such a crazy consumer affair all around, the least you can do is make sure a certain number of your gifts are ethically sourced.

So here are the results of our first foray into stocking filler possibilities. For the kids, here are some gorgeous little handcrafted papier mache animals which can be painted and decorated (a guaranteed 45 minutes of fun!) and this pretty little beaded frog, made in South Africa, will nicely adorn any the top of any stocking. The Apothecary’s Garden Sweet Jar contains 200g of candied sweets in a variety of flavours – orange and lemon, chamomile and honey and special Hangover Drops for the grown-ups!

These wildflower seeds, which can be sown at any time of year, will bring a smile to your loved ones’ faces and for the ladies who will appreciate some good quality organic beauty care products, here are some of some of our favourite products around at the moment:
Olive and Almond Hand Cream from Trevarno
Cleansing Facial Oil from Nude
Rose and Jasmine Body Oil from The Organic Pharmacy
Organic Lip Formula from Neal’s Yard

And to wrap all these goodies up in look out for fab Christmas stockings from ethical fashion label Pardess, specially made for soon to be launched beauty website Cult Beauty – sign up to enter their Christmas goodie bag giveaway – what a treat!

Autumn’s kicking in, bringing colder, chillier days. What better excuse for taking a look at all the fab autumn fashion out there? And what’s more, each season there seems to be more and more available on the ethical fashion front. Long gone are the days when all you could find were slightly dodgy-looking websites selling sack-like, hempy t-shirts. Ethical fashion has finally made the style grade.

Penny Cooke, founder of London’s first ethical fashion boutique, Equa, has some great autumn style suggestions just for Your Tomorrow. Here are her autumn pointers:

1. The Edun Midnightbreak Shift is a lovely and stylish silk shift dress that is perfect for the party season. Wear it as a dress with a waist belt, or dress it down over jeans for a more casual sassy look.
2. The new People Tree capsule collection, due in next week, is fabulous, I especially love this frock style coat.
3. Our best selling slim leg jeans from organic company Delforte - I live in these!
4. Annie Greenabelle is currently our best selling designer and is new this season. This dress is fabulous, so contemporary and for so many different age groups, I wear mine over jeans or leggings with my Terra Plana Wood boots.

And if all this is making you feel a wardrobe revamp is in order, why not book yourself a session with Equa’s professional ethical stylist, Elizabeth Laskar. Elizabeth will advise you on your best key colours and what silhouettes best suit your body shape. She will then help you pick out some great outfits and even more exciting there’s a 20% discount on anything you buy in the boutique. Check out the website for more details.

And as every outfit needs a pair of fabulous shoes to go with, get the low down on the latest ethical fashionable footwear from The Guardian’s deputy fashion editor, Hadley Freeman. Enjoy!

Another step forward for the mainstreaming of green, Marks & Spencer is to open its first two eco-stores in Scotland next month. This ties in with the rolling out of their ‘Plan A’ – a £200 million spend over the next five years on implementing a 100-point plan which includes making the supermarkets carbon neutral, sending no waste to landfills by 2012, offering more Fairtrade products, making 20 million garments a year out of Fairtrade cotton, reducing use of packaging by 25%, using packaging materials from sustainable or recycled sources and buying as much food from the UK and Ireland as possible. M&S chief executive Stuart Rose also plans to swap his company BMW for a hydrogen-powered car. Good on him!

Powered by renewable energy, M&S claims the new stores will use 25% less energy and will be cutting carbon emissions by half. The new Pollok store in Glasgow will receive electricity equivalent to the output of a two-megawatt turbine based on a small farm in Aberdeen, which the company is sponsoring. According to the director of store design, development and procurement for the chain, Richard Gillies, the plan is to sponsor small-scale Scottish farmers to supply the Scottish stores with energy generated from wind turbines or anaerobic digestion systems, which use animal waste to generate electricity.

Lighting, refrigeration and ventilation will all be more efficient and timber used in the stores will be accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council, a charity that promotes responsible usage of timber resources. Other features will include rainwater and condensation harvesting units which will enable water to be recycled elsewhere, such as flushing toilets, and naturally grown products will replace cellophane in food packaging.

Richard Gillies said to The Scotsman newspaper: “We’re not creating a one-off, high-profile store that nobody’s going to shop in. What we’re trying to develop is real, tangible features.” The first store will be opened in the new Silverburn shopping centre in Pollock, Glasgow, the second in Galashiels with a third planned for Bournemouth.

You know when style bible Vogue magazine decides to dedicate five of its hallowed pages to a consumer trend the official style credential stamp has been well and truly stamped! And that’s just what the fashion trendsetters have deigned to do in the October 2007 issue with an Eco-chic feature on going green. From Chantelle’s bamboo bras to Homeblown’s biodegradable surfboards, Vogue lists their favourite planet-friendly products giving readers a veritable push in the right direction.

The Vogue fashionistas are loving eco-totes – that’s re-usable fabric shopping bags to you and me! Take your pick from a couple of super-stylish ones we have in stock at the moment – urban hipsters will love this cool Cement bag and this handcrafted Siscal bag just oozes countryside chic. Eco-friendly stationary gets a big thumbs up so why not get writing those pressing thank you notes with the help of our fab banana leaf gift writing box and jot down your to-do lists on our sturdy recycled PCB notepad.

Eco jewellery is also high on the list – Vogue just loves conflict-free diamond necklaces by Tom Binns and gold from Katherine Hamnett. For something that won’t break the bank, take a look at this gorgeous rosewood bracelet – also stocked in London boutiques and department stores at a much higher price! Fashion-wise the Vogue style mavens are suggesting you kit yourself out in Tina Lutz and Marcia Patmos knitwear (Lutzandpatmos.com), Patagonian Wild Thyme boots and Sharkah Chakra jeans. Other brands doing eco-jeans are Levi’s, Notify, Howies, Loomstate, 1921 jeans, Ascension and Wrangler.

And if you do decide to splash out on organic-cotton bed-linen that’s free from pesticides at www.lumadirect.com, make sure you do your laundry with our brilliant Eco balls – 100% hypo-allergenic, residue-free and anti-bacterial, they also work out at 3p a wash compared to 20-30p for leading detergents. Eco-friendly and affordable – now that’s more like it!