Get your eco goodies at oasis in the heart of Temple Bar

Cultivate is more a movement than a shop - and if you're looking for sustainable salad bowls, pedal-powered dynamo bike lights, organic paint or aluminium-free deodorant, this is the place to go, writes Emma Cullinan

IF YOU have always felt that you should be a bit greener but never really had the time to go in pursuit of toxic-free, recycled and solar powered goodies you could give your conscience a quick salve by heading down to Cultivate in the quiet western end of Temple Bar.

This is a remarkable organisation that was out to save the world before most people even knew what the words "peak oil" meant: they hold a sustainability conference addressed by international and local experts, and they also run yoga and health days. In the Cultivate shop, in the space of an hour of so, you can turn yourself and your home into eco-paragons and stun your guests at how you balance your world-saving ways with chic looks.

Take the Ekobo Bamboo tableware range - land the lacquered salad bowl with rings of bamboo within (€19.90) onto the table and, should anyone comment on its beauty, feel free to bore them with how bamboo - which grows like the wind - is the ultimate renewable material.

You can get salad servers to match. In the centre of the table you could have the large clear pillar-candle holder made from recycled glass (€35) while in the garden, night lights could glow gloriously in coloured lanterns also made from recycled glass (€6 each).

For soft healthy walls head for the Auro organic paints, which are far easier to use than myth has it. They have a wonderful lemon scent giving your home a post-painting atmosphere of an aromatherapist's lair.

The brain-teasing part is that the paints come in large white tubs and you have to mix in the small pots of colour yourself, to your chosen (by mistake or not) shade. The range also includes varnish and floor paints.

Those of an artistic nature and delicate disposition can buy non-toxic paints (€13.50 each) and hand-charred willow charcoal (€10). Further stationery includes solvent-free Pritt Sticks, staple-less staplers (€4.50), non-varnished pencils (40 cent), recycled ball-pens and stick-on notes (600 for €3.95).

Great, chunky pavement chalks (€1.20) are over in the children's section where coloured-wooden toys will melt the heart of many a parent and could even intrigue a child with their solar-powered acrobats. There is a traditional-looking carousel powered by the sun (€35) as well as a wooden helicopter whose rotor blades bear solar panels. For kids who can't do without coloured plastic, there are kits to make lions and racing cars (€15 each) which are also propelled by the sun, as is a radio headphone set for more relaxing moments.

The shop also sells solar-powered chargers that will regenerate iPods, cameras, phones and the like and, as one who has spent many a long journey with one attached to the windscreen, I can vouch for it. There are also pedal-powered dynamo bike lights (€22) and others which run on magnets attached to the bike wheels (€50).

There is a section more akin to a health food shop where sodium laureth sulphate-free shampoo and hand-wash can be yours, and refills are available from large containers. Spend five happy minutes smelling the vegetable soaps (€3), from rose to orange, and then grab a long-handled wooden back brush with which to apply it. Complete the cleansing routine with an aluminium-free deodorant stick (€5.40).

Now armed with eco-essentials you can head to the bookshelves and find out how to live the green life: perhaps with a copy of The Allotment Handbook by Caroline Foley (published by New Holland, €19.50).

To start you off there's the nursery, offering bay, parsley and various flowers and shrubs, some of which seem to be cuttings from the gardens of friends of Cultivate. One is simply entitled Pink Fruit bush.

But the best thing about this is that it is an oasis in the city centre. Well-established plants surround the area and signs tell you what they can do for people: in a medicinal, spiritual and consumable way.

You'd do well to come here in a lunch hour to completely get away from the office and, should you wish, you can return to the computer with a wooden mouse.