Sustainable Gifts and Goods
Choose sustainable gifts to help the circular economy evolve and revolve.
In the quest to find the perfect holiday gifts, adding sustainability as a factor can either complicate or simplify our lives. This action guide helps you use sustainability to make your life easier by quickly and clearly determining which kinds of gifts you want to give, and which categories of gifts you can cross off your list.
Celebrating the holidays with sustainable giving is an opportunity to consider whether to give tangible objects—and if you do, to consider the full life cycle of the materials in them. This is a practical step on the “reduce, reuse, recycle”pathway to sustainable goods, one of seven pathways to sustainability. Our shared destination is a circular economy—we’ll buy less stuff, but when we do buy, we’ll choose goods that can be retained, repaired, reused, and recycled rather than thrown away.
Here is a quick list to help you focus your holiday giving on sustainable choices:
“Buy nothing” gifts: make your own gifts of food or art, give away possessions that the recipient would value, 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 burden of producing and distributing printed materials (shameless plug: a One Step This Week subscription makes a great gift!).
Donations and memberships: make a donation or buy a membership in an organization, especially organizations doing work in the sustainability field.
Tickets to performances: support local arts and culture.
Seeds and bulbs: send seed packets or flower bulbs for a gift that grows.
Sustainable living goods: help your recipients take steps on a pathway to sustainability, with gifts that help them protect our environment.
Gift cards or cash: take gift-giving advice from an economist and let your recipients choose what they really want.
Buy Nothing or Buy Better?
Because capitalism seems to encourage rampant consumerism, many commentators have concluded that capitalism itself is not sustainable. The “buy nothing” movement seeks to change the basis for wealth from spending money to sharing goods. Two networks that can help you get or give away free stuff are your local Buy Nothing group (if one exists) or the Freecycle network. Your local library might also be a place where you can freely borrow things like power tools that you use infrequently. Many libraries worldwide, inspired by the Toronto Tool Library, have expanded beyond books to become a “library of things” that allow you to use your library card to check out all manner of goods and tools.
Not all of us will be satisfied with the gift choices we can find through our local Buy Nothing or Freecycle group, and it may not be possible to give library cards to access a library of things. You’ll greatly expand your choice of gifts if you start with buying nothing as an aspirational goal but remain open to buying something to delight everyone on your holiday shopping list. For example, I like to make maple syrup to give as gifts, but I still buy jars and labels.
To push back a little on the assertion that being a consumer in a capitalist economy (i.e. spending money) is always bad for the environment, consider that we can consume goods or services. When you buy a service, in one sense, you are buying nothing (not a physical thing), but in another sense (a measure of economic activity reflected in our gross domestic product), you are buying something: an experience. Since World War II, the United States economy has shifted away from manufacturing and purchasing goods to providing and purchasing services. In 2022, four out of five private sector jobs were in the service sector. Spending more of your money on services and less on goods is perfectly in tune with the strategy to “reduce, reuse, and recycle” on the pathway to a sustainable goods economy.
Let’s dig in a little more on the idea of buying services: often, some goods are involved. When we eat a meal in a restaurant, we’re paying for service from the cooks, wait staff, and dishwashers, but we’re also buying food and perhaps a disposable straw and utensils. Many times, it’s possible to improve the sustainability of the goods involved in an economic transaction for a relatively modest increase in the total cost. One example I’ve seen in New Zealand is wooden utensils provided with take-out meals instead of plastic ones. This adds a few cents to the cost of a meal to make it more sustainable.
It’s possible to be a responsible consumer in today’s economy by prioritizing services to reduce the amount of goods you buy but then carefully considering what types of goods you do buy.
Gifts That Help
I used to own a sustainable living store full of goods and supplies that I carefully researched and selected to help people take steps on seven pathways to sustainability. Some examples are organic seeds and gardening tools to help people grow healthy and delicious food, solar panels and rechargeable batteries to help people generate and store their electricity from sunlight, and composting pails and pamphlets to help people turn garbage into garden soil.
If you decide to buy goods (i.e., a physical item) as gifts, here’s a checklist for sustainability:
For durable goods: Is this high quality and long-lasting? (Would you want this in your own home?)
For perishable goods: Will this fully decompose safely? (Would you put it in your own compost pile?)
Is it packaged responsibly?
Are the materials in the gift non-toxic and fully biodegradable or recyclable?
Is the maker trustworthy? (Do you believe the product claims and testimonials?)
Wrap It Well
One final thought if you decide to buy and give tangible goods. Each year, over two million pounds of wrapping paper ends up in landfills across the United States. You can help prevent this needless waste!
Consider one of three ideas:
Save and reuse wrapping paper and ribbons from gifts you receive.
Repurpose your waste paper, such as paper bags—this can be a fun art project!
What’s Still Ahead on the Pathway…
Earlier this year, we explored the pathway to sustainable movement and energy. Now, we’re exploring the pathway to sustainable goods to make the transition from a linear landfilling economy to a circular recycling economy. Stay with us on the journey to sustainability as we take action to have a positive impact on the world.
References and Further Reading
Why You're Spending Too Much on Holiday Gifts (and How to Fix That), The Decision Lab
The elephant in the room: Capitalism is not sustainable, Circular Triangle
How to find (and survive) a Buy Nothing group, Los Angeles Times
Library of things, Wikipedia
Nine facts about the service sector in the United States, The Brookings Institution
Reusable Gift Bags, Etsy