Earth Day takes place every year on April 22. Although we believe sustainability should be celebrated throughout the year, this day is a special opportunity to take your sustainable efforts up a notch and encourage those around you– whether they be family members, friends, neighbors, or coworkers– to do the same.
If you’re looking for sustainable ways to celebrate Earth Day, we’re here to help! Our team has plenty of sustainable gifting tips and eco-friendly gift ideas to help you honor the earth while you celebrate it.
Earth Day Gifts: What to Look For
To truly honor and respect the earth, it's important to be a responsible, cautious consumer and look for Earth Day gifts that are sustainably produced and sustainably packaged. Keep an eye out for products that are fair trade, made with recycled, organic, and natural materials, completely free of chemicals and pollutants, and compostable or biodegradable. But don’t just take the product or company’s word for it– do your due diligence and check the label for relevant certifications!
Additionally, look for gifts that give back to the earth and support environmental efforts and causes that are important to you (and the environmentalist you’re shopping for). Nowadays, many companies donate a percentage of their sales to protect and preserve the environment. Here at Bestowe, we plant one tree for every gift we sell through our partnership with One Tree Planted.
Another thing to keep in mind when shopping for eco-friendly gifts is to try and give people things that they actually want and need– not useless items that will end up in landfills. Consumable, eco-friendly products will rarely go to waste, so that’s usually a safe place to start.
Zero Waste Gift Ideas
Obviuosly, the number one way for you to give a sustainable gift is to give a gift something that doesn’t require any production or generate any waste.We understand the global impact we have as a gifting company, which is why we’re including these alternatives to buying gifts.
One way to give a zero-waste gift is to surprise them with the gift of an experience. Pack up a picnic and hike to a beautiful spot for lunch or plan a bike tour around town to visit a series of art galleries or microbreweries. Not only is an experience a more environmentally-friendly gift idea, it’s also an opportunity to spend quality time with the recipeint and make special memories together.
Another way to give a zero-waste gift is to shop at a local thrift store, vintage store, or antique store for something special. This way, you can still present someone with a physical gift, but one that doesn’t generate any new waste. You can reduce waste by reusing and recycling old items so that they don’t end up in a landfill!
Sustainable Gift Ideas for Environmentalists
Shopping for gifts from local businesses in your area is one effective way to cut down on associated transportation miles and minimize greenhouse gas emissions. It’s the socially responsible way to shop too! You can draw some inspiration from these Shop Local gift sets that feature an assortment of unique, small-batch products that support local artisans and businesses from Northern and Southern California. One item included in these gift boxes that we particularly love is Alter Eco chocolate, sourced from farmer-owned coops practicing sustainable, regenerative agriculture. It’s the perfect sweet treat to celebrate Earth Day! These gift sets are local to us, but you can easily put together a gift basket of your own with products that are local to you. You can find natural, locally-made products at co-ops, farmer’s markets, art fairs, natural food stores, holiday markets, and zero waste re-up stores in your local area.
Shop This Gift Box
These tote bags from climate-neutral clothing company Seadon feature important messages and beautiful artwork from different environmental activists. The bags are made from 100% GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certified organic cotton and a percentage of the sales goes to nonprofit organizations. Out of the Woods is another sustainable tote bag company worth checking out. Bags like these are a great gift for an environmentalist looking to use fewer plastic or paper bags and spread awareness at the same time! A tote like these could also be used to wrap up other eco-friendly gift items and cut down on waste.
Sustainable Gifts for Her
Most people use haircare and skincare products regularly, which can contribute to exorbitant amounts of waste over time. Eco Roots is a great place to shop for zero-waste beauty and wellness products, like shampoo and conditioner bars, face creams, etc. A practical gift that almost any environmentalist will use and appreciate!
Another unique and useful gift idea is a compost bin made of eco-friendly materials. This Biovessel composter is so beautiful, it’s practically a work of art in and of itself. Above and beyond your average compost bin, it’s a scientifically-engineered indoor ecosystem inspired by nature and designed to deal with your waste.
Sustainable Gifts for Him
For the adventurous environmentalist who loves to spend time outdoors, some eco-friendly camping or backpacking gear would make a wonderful Earth Day gift. If you’re not sure what gear they already have or need, Fernweh Food Co. makes delicious and nutritious plant-based backpacking meals, with packaging that is 100% Omnidegradable or compostable. The founders of this company were disheartened by the amount of waste they were seeing on trails and decided to do something about it.
Another outdoor brand we love is Rumpl - they make cozy “sleeping bag blankets” with 100% post-consumer recycled materials. The company is now recycling over 5 million discarded plastic bottles through their supply chain every year!
Gifts that Help the Environment
If you want to give a meaningful gift that truly helps the environment, you can also donate to an environmental organization in someone’s name in place of a physical gift. Alternatively, some environmental nonprofit organizations have their own gift shops, where you can find gifts that directly support the nonprofit’s mission while helping to spread awareness.
We also love the idea of giving someone a book about a specific environmental cause that you care about as an Earth Day gift. This can help advance awareness and get more people involved!
Wrapping Gifts for Environmentalists: Get Creative!
It’s estimated that 50,000 trees are cut down each year to make wrapping paper and gift bags. Don’t spend all this time finding a sustainable gift only to wrap it up in paper made of microplastics or ship it off in a box full of styrofoam pellets! Instead, think outside of the box (literally) and get creative with these sustainable gift wrapping ideas.
Why Shop for Environmentally-Friendly Gifts?
If you’ve made it this far, we probably don’t have to convince you of the importance of sustainable gifting… but we’ll reiterate anyway because it’s so important to us!
As a gifting business, we’re not going to shy away from the fact that gifting can be wasteful and harmful to the environment. However, when done carefully and consciously, gifting can be trigger ripples of positive change. For example, sustainable gifting can encourage the people you care about to embrace a more eco-conscious lifestyle, especially when paired with some environmental education. If you give someone a compost bin and guide on how to use it, that’s one less person contributing to unnecessary landfill waste.
Shop Earth Day Gifts & More from Bestowe!
Sustainability is one of our core values here at Bestowe. We partner with many incredible eco-friendly businesses and artisans, so please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need more sustainable gifting ideas or tips.
Happy Earth Day! Thank you for being a responsible consumer and doing your part to support the environment, today and every day.
