Avoid stressful situations they say: it shortens your life. I do my best, but then I feel my blood pressure steadily rising at the sight of a shopper outside the supermarket lifting plastic bag after plastic bag after plastic bag (I could go on) of shopping into the back of their Range Rover. Briefly, I think I would like to ask them if they have the remotest idea of the damage they are doing, but their body language is so angry, their hauteur so threatening that I back off and wish several life-threatening diseases on them instead. (You never know.) Not only have they seen off another chunk of rainforest, they have sent my stress levels through the roof.

Rebecca Hosking turned her Devon village into a plastic-bag free site. Hero. Anya Hindmarch made the non-plastic bag hip. Hero. I carry a cotton carrier bag in my satchel so that I can refuse almost every plastic bag I am offered. Though I still find myself gratefully accepting one from the fishmonger. It reminds me of when my aunt died and we found drawer after drawer of brand new plastic bags she had nicked from the checkout at Tesco. There must have been hundreds. Anyone who refuses a plastic bag is my hero.

Part of the problem is a 'man thing'. Far too many of us seem to have an aversion to carrying any sort of shopping bag, assuming that to be caught in possession of such an article casts some sort of doubt over manhood. It doesn't. But carrying a plastic bag does tell the world one thing - it tells them we don't care. (Either that or we have been to the fishmonger.)

Here at Food Monthly we have been combining our own list of eco heroes. Some are high profile, but many others are not. Personally, I would have liked to have seen a list of eco turkeys too, the people who are doing the most to harm rather than heal. To rub their noses in the mess they are turning our planet into: 'The famous names, the shopper with the Range Rover and the 28 plastic bags, and the pensioners who nick 10 bags every time they buy a pint of milk and a tin of tuna.' But then maybe I'm just a bit angry right now. So angry in fact that this month's recipes are all cabbage. So refuse a bag and eat your greens. Apparently they are good for stress.