Harry Hill, the massive-collared former doctor turned off the wall comedian, is to launch a brand new range of salted peanuts with our friends over at Liberation! Nuts in order to show his support for African and Latin American nut farmers.

Hill has refused any fee for his services, preferring to ensure that the nut producers benefit as much as possible from this partnership.

‘I love salted peanuts myself and feel I am doing a service to snackers everywhere who want to know the farmers who grew what they are eating have been paid a fair price,’ explained Hill. ‘I’m working with Liberation because all of its products are Fairtrade and the company is run purely to benefit the farmers and their families.’

As well as putting his name to the product, Harry also designed the striking green packaging for the nuts which are launching soon and will be available over at Ethicalsuperstore.com.

Do you have beehives on your roof, keep goats in your garden or have you turned your lawn into a wheat field?

How Ethical’s favourite TV chef and all round good egg Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall is looking for people who produce their own food in challenging or unusual circumstances for the next series of the Channel 4 series River Cottage.

The series will feature produce that has been harvested or made in Autumn, so if that’s you, then they would love to hear from you.

If you’d like to take part, send an e-mail, or a photo of your food growing or being made to homegrown [at] keofilms.com

And, if you’re reading this in the Autumn, perhaps you’d like to check out Hugh’s recipe for Whole Pumpkin Baked with Cream »

Perhaps I should find a more seasonal recipe for summer…

Well now, the second of these Armchair Activist posts is brought to you to inspire you to green up your day job or your workplace. According to an article on longer working hours in Britain on the BBC website, the average working week for Brits is approx 37 hours a week. Therefore, even if you are the most socially responsible and eco-friendly individual outside of work, those 148 hours a month spent in the office or on company business could be severely denting your green credentials.

So here are a few tips on how to claw back those ethical points and encourage your colleagues and bosses to do the same!

1. Office supplies: There is a plethora of green alternatives to your average staplers, pens, paper, pads etc on the  market these days. You can now purchase stapleless staplers, FSC certified pens, recycled paper and a great range of recycled and reused pads. So, don’t add to the deforestation plight or landfill-overflow; go for sustainable stationary today!

2. Go paperless: Another alternative to office stationary is to make your office a paper free zone. Replace that mountain of Post-It notes you’re buried under with an organised reminder system on your computer. Email instead of passing notes on, back up data on DVD’s, USB sticks and other digital media rather than printing out and filing endless reams of paper! If all else fails, at least recycle the paper you have to use.

Find out more tips here . . .

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Given the huge amount of interest generated by our post of the 22nd July concerning the Ethical Spanking Paddle, we figured that interest in ‘paddling’ was high…

Wikipedia, that source of all knowledge, helps out with a definition of the ‘paddle’ as a good starting point:

“usually a wooden instrument with a long, flat face and narrow neck, so called because it is roughly shaped like the homonymous piece of sports equipment, but existing in more varied sizes and dimensions, (length, width and thickness)”

This much we had however already established.

You can find out more information and tips about ethical paddling after the jump…

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Well, there’s a title to grab your attention!

Image via Smartplanet.com.

A quick whip around the office for ideas of alternative uses for this handy device brought forth various suggestions, from a primitive rafting paddle or a table tennis bat, to a cheese board!

However, this genuinely is sold as a Spanking Paddle, much to our entertainment!

You may be wondering where we found such an item, but whilst immersing ourselves in researching ethical products for ethicalsuperstore.com we stumble across many ‘interesting’ products which grab our attention. This is undoubtedly the most amusing items we’ve discovered this week - we weren’t searching specifically - honest!

So Why oh Why is this considered ethical we hear you cry?!?

Primarily it is because it was handcrafted as part of a fair trade project in India using sustainable wood, making this piece of ‘equipment’ the ultimate in eco-friendly spanking technology.

So what are you waiting for?!? The producers of these sustainable spanking paddles, Coco de Mer (NB don’t click on this link at work!) wax lyrical about the endorphins released from a good spanking, but perhaps the less said here and now about the potential associated euphoric highs the better…

I think the most important lesson to be learnt here is that whatever your hobbies, and whatever your persuasions, you can do whatever on earth it is that you do in an eco-friendly manner! And the moral of this story is that your sex life certainly should not be excluded from this. Buying fair trade condoms is a good starting point, but whether you stop there is up to you!