Green your Christmas: men's boxers

A close runner-up to shabby socks and rusty-looking Lynx box sets as staple blokes' gifts, pants are probably the last thing you'd think of greening up. There are, however, a slew of choices, from organic and Fairtrade cotton to bamboo boxers -- which don't feel like grass, honest.

We're mostly looking at boxers here, because we're assuming briefs disappeared from fashion when C&A left the British high street. For cotton, there's a fair bit of choice.

From personal experience, we'd recommend Howies' organic cotton ones: at £15 a pair, they ain't cheap, but they do look good, feel good and are good news for the farmer who didn’t get sprayed in pesticides to pick your groin cotton. If you're feeling generous, Howies also do a luxurious £35 Merino wool pair (pictured), which come from happy sheep and are reportedly free from mulesing.

If those prices don't take your fancy, there are cheaper options. Gossipium has a pair of okay-looking £7.50 organic ones while Nigel's Eco Store stocks a slightly BHS-circa-1989 organic pair for £7. A better choice might be People Tree's £7 boxers, which are organic and Fairtrade-certified, meaning the cotton pickers got a decent wage. Go for the black ones, as we suspect the whites may look nappy-like if you're not a model.

Oddly, Marks and Spencer doesn’t do any eco boxers, despite its reputation for ethical clobber and as an underwear paradise-on-earth. One final option for weirding out your uncle/brother/male slave is to give them the gift of bamboo boxers. Bamboo Clothing flogs a £12 black pair that are 70 per cent bamboo, 25 per cent cotton and 5 per cent lycra. Bamboo scores its greenie points on the grounds that it grows ridiculously fast -- and as a clothing material also has the virtue of wicking like sports gear does, which is good news for betty swollocks.

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