Comment: Hooray for the eco-interiors trend – even if we can’t all afford it

Oil drum sofa? Bed made from bits of wood? Like all things eco, environmentally friendly furniture is currently all the rage – and there really is no limit to the quirky design options on offer.

Personally, I prefer a more subtle, less recently-reclaimed look, but others are all about the obviously upcycled options - there are some fine examples of both in this week's feature.

Whatever your preference, it's all great news for designers and the environment alike. Not necessarily for our pockets, however - loads of this stuff is properly pricey.

As with any bespoke buy, there tends to be a sizeable price tag attached. Fair enough, really: creating a chair out of bottle tops, say, is going to take a lot longer than your average flat pack version, so it makes sense that the resulting masterpiece will cost more.

Old school milk deliveries pose a similar price problem: they're clearly better for the environment than buying another plastic bottle of semi-skimmed, but not everyone can afford or justify the increased price.

One thing that's a financial level playing field is plain old recycling - an area that's seen a massive amount of change. When I was a kid, no one really cared. Glass bottles were the only thing that we bothered to recycle - everything else was fast-tracked to landfill.

Nowadays we've all embraced recycling so avidly that many of our kitchens and gardens are essentially bin storage pens, with little space for anything else.

Ultimately, most of us are doing what we can to aid the eco effort, even if that does mean opting for supermarket, plastic-packed milk. While obviously not up there with collecting dozens of empty bottles and turning them into a dressing table, bothering to put them in the recycling is an effort of sorts.

And if you've got children they may be required for a school craft project, returning to you a week later as a unique (awful) ornament you'll never be allowed to recycle

Priceless, in more ways than one.