Former Changing Rooms presenter Oliver Heath sexes up the eco plight with his new online shop, Ecocentric, which sells contemporary and stylish sustainable products for the home. We went to find out what's on offer and what keeps his eco-machine ticking

Nobody wants to destroy the planet, it's just that planet-saving requires effort. And in exactly the same way we know we should go to the gym more and eat chocolate less, it remains the case that knowing and doing are different things.

This is the premise that Oliver Heath, designer and pioneer of a new style he has dubbed 'urban eco chic', feeds off: we're not trying to make the earth as inhospitable a place as possible for our grandchildren, but mankind is an inherently lazy beast and planet-saving can be made a whole lot more appealing if we get some immediate gain from it ourselves.

'It needs to be exciting enough for people to do it', Heath says. And, with that aim in mind, he set up Ecocentric, an online eco products store that sells everything from satchels constructed from old leather belts to cuddly toys made from reclaimed felt.

Nice things sell themselves

It's an effortless sell for Heath, who proclaims that 'people wanting nice things' is a simple yet powerful vehicle to spread a wider message of respecting the environment and reusing its natural resources as much as we can.

And for us the selfish consumer, we get the pleasure of owning nice things in our homes that we can show off to our friends. Filling your home with stylishly cut wine bottles for vases and organic cotton bedspreads or a solar-powered charger for your nano, gives your home a 'richer story'.

When once we winced to our friends about impossible-to-follow instructions and missing parts from our flat-pack furniture, we now exchange uplifting pleasantries on that lovely reclaimed felt lampshade as we sip organic wine from recycled wineglasses. That's the idea anyway.

So how did the ex Changing Rooms presenter, who often tried unsuccessfully to get a few recycled product placements into the show, come to be so passionate about saving the planet?

'I grew up in Brighton, and living on the edge of the country makes you very aware of it,' he says. After a period of teaching wind-surfing, he turned his hand to architecture and finally to design. Making his projects eco-friendly is simply a part of his brief in the same way that a client may require mahogany shelves to compliment the dining table. 'That's just one more thing, one more job in the design process.'

His aim is to make sustainability part of the furniture. 'I think what we're experiencing is the industrial revolution of our time. We can improve the quality of our environment.'

And with that he puts the felt lampshade on his head and explains that 'you can wear it as a hat and look like a pixie, it's great.'

For products sourced by Ecocentric go to www.ecocentric.co.uk