When looking for holiday gifts for a variety of friends and family members, adding sustainability as a factor can simplify the search. Today's guide will help you use sustainability as a benchmark for quality and commitment to our environment and the future.
If you want to gift tangible objects, consider the entire life cycle of the materials they contain. This is a practical step on the “reduce, reuse, recycle” path to sustainable goods. Our shared goal is a circular economy – we buy fewer things, but when we buy, we choose goods that can be saved, repaired, reused and recycled rather than thrown away.
Here's a quick list to help you focus your holiday giving on sustainable choices:
• “Buy Nothing” Gifts: Make your own food or art gifts, give away one of your items that the recipient would appreciate, share your feelings with a poem or song, or offer to do something fun or helpful .
• Online Subscriptions: Provide education or entertainment and support the work of journalists and authors without the environmental impact of the production and distribution of printed materials.
• Donations and Memberships: Make a donation or purchase a membership to an organization, particularly organizations working in the area of sustainability.
• Performance Tickets: Support local arts and culture.
• Seeds and bulbs: Send packets of seeds or bulbs as gifts that will grow.
• Sustainable Home Goods: Help your recipients take steps toward sustainability with gifts that help them protect our environment.
• Gift cards or cash: Let your recipients decide what they really want.
Spending more money on services and less on goods fits perfectly with the “reduce, reuse and recycle” strategy on the way to a sustainable goods economy.
It is often possible to improve the sustainability of the goods involved in an economic transaction while increasing the overall costs relatively slightly. It is possible to be a responsible consumer in today's economy by prioritizing services to reduce the amount of goods you buy, but then thinking carefully about what types of goods you actually buy.
If you decide to purchase merchandise (i.e. a physical item) as a gift, here is a sustainability checklist:
• For durable goods: Is it high quality and durable?
• For perishable goods: Can they safely be completely decomposed?
• Is it packaged responsibly?
• Are the materials in the gift non-toxic and fully biodegradable or recyclable?
• Is the manufacturer trustworthy? (Do you believe the product claims and reviews?)
• Was the item made locally, perhaps a handmade gift from an artisan, allowing you to avoid the environmental costs of shipping while supporting your community?
Here are some eco-friendly gift ideas:
• Reusable glass or stainless steel water bottles
• An indoor herb or garden set
• Sprout sticks (these sticks can be planted after use and grow into herbs or flowers)
• Bamboo toothbrushes or portable utensils
• Solar powered chargers for charging cell phones
• Eco-friendly bamboo phone stands
• Beeswax food wraps (a reusable alternative to plastic wrap)
• A compost bin (a compact countertop compost bin helps dispose of kitchen waste)
One final thought if you decide to purchase and gift material goods: Each year, over 2 million pounds of wrapping paper ends up in landfills across the United States. You can help eliminate this waste with these ideas:
• Plain brown paper is easily composted or recycled and can be used as wrapping paper.
• Save and reuse wrapping paper and ribbon from the gifts you receive.
• Recycle your waste paper like paper bags – this can be a fun art project!
• Use reusable cloth gift bags.
You can easily put your 2025 sustainability resolution into action by modeling sustainable giving in 2024.
Fred Horch and Peggy Siegle are leaders of the sustainable practice. Visit SustainablePractice.Life and subscribe to One Step This Week to receive expert action guides to help your household and organizations become highly sustainable.
Copy the story link