The fine art of gift giving can come in many shapes and sizes but it doesn’t have to hurt the planet in the process. 40% of Canadians receive at least one gift they don’t want. Luckily for the planet, Canadians tend to hold on to unwanted gifts but in the U.K. almost 20% ends up in a landfill. With the average person receiving roughly $66 worth of unwanted gifts in the U.S., about $9.1 billion will be spent on unwanted gifts in 2023. That’s a lot of waste going straight to a landfill.
We’ve updated our Eco-Friendly Gift Ideas from 2022 to include some more ideas for sustainable and thoughtful gift ideas for 2023. We hope our list inspires gifts that reduce waste, use sustainable materials and promote ethical business practices.
Whether you’re searching for the perfect present for a nature enthusiast, an avid reader, or someone who simply appreciates the beauty of eco-friendly living, we’ve designed our curated list of eco-friendly gift ideas for a diverse range of tastes and preferences.
Table of Contents
For The Homebody
Kitchen Textiles
Whether your giftee is a pro chef or they burn cereal, they’re going to need something to clean up a kitchen mess. Gift with an eco-friendly conscience and add some sustainable textiles like tea towels, reusable paperless towels or even some linen napkins to their kitchen arsenal.
Best Places To Buy
Storage
Whether it’s a wicker basket for all their blankets, or a glass container for their grains, everyone needs something to put their stuff in. Customize your storage solution to your gift recipient’s lifestyle and you’ve got the perfect present on your hands.
Best Places To Buy
Beeswax Candles
Unlike paraffin candles, beeswax candles don’t release toxic chemicals into the air, burn longer and emit a distinctive sweet aroma, making them a great eco-friendly gift for any occasion.
Best Places To Buy
For The Foodie
Coffee / Coffee Pot
Whether your giftee is a coffee connoisseur or they’re just getting into the bean, a good bag of fairtrade coffee or a new long lasting coffee pot can make a great eco-friendly gift. If you’re feeling extra generous, some companies offer 6 or 12 month coffee subscriptions extending your gift year round.
Best Places To Buy
Local Honey / Honey Dipper
The honeybee isn’t from Canada but it hasn’t stopped it from setting up shop with local beekeepers across the country and providing us with delicious and nutritious honey for years now. Known to have antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory properties disguised in a sweet treat, honey can be a great eco-friendly gift.
Best Places To Buy
Homemade Jams & Relishes
Pack their pantry with some shelf-stable jams and relishes to spice up their dishes. Bonus points if you make them yourself, check out this plum jam recipe to get you started.
Best Places To Buy
For The Nature Enthusiast
Plants or Seeds
What do nature enthusiasts love? Nature. Give them a slice of nature in the form of an easy to care for houseplant or some local wildflower seeds if they have an outdoor space.
Best Places To Buy
Compass
While not exactly necessary these days since most phones have a compass built in, there’s something unmistakably cool about having an actual compass. Not to mention it wouldn’t hurt if your phone, or your giftee’s phone, happened to die in the middle of the wilderness.
Best Places To Buy
Adventure Kit
Adventure kits for kids can help spark imagination, encourage a love for the outdoors and an appreciation for nature. You could even DIY your own and customize the adventures for your local area or a particular subject of interest.
Best Places To Buy
For The Travel Fiend
Zero Waste Toiletry Kit
Travel-sized miniatures are a terrible plastic waste offender leading to two-and-a-half Boeing 747s ending up in landfills every year. A few simple reusable swaps can eliminate all this waste though. Add some packaging free shampoo for their luscious locks or some compostable toothbrushes for their pearly whites and you’ve got a thoughtful and useful eco-friendly gift ready to go.
Best Places To Buy
Bandana or Pashmina
One of the secrets to traveling light, and sustainably, is having multipurpose items. Enter the bandana and the pashmina – the Swiss Army knives of travel items. They’ll do more than double duty acting as blankets, rain or sun cover, food wraps and a million other things for your travelling giftee.
Best Places To Buy
Reusable Utensil Kit
Similar to travel size miniatures, plastic utensils are a major planet offender with 40,000,000,000 plastic spoons, knives and forks ending up in our landfills every year. Help take a slice out of this plastic pile by gifting a reusable and eco-friendly utensil kit for sustainable snacking on the go.
Best Places To Buy
For The Animal Lover
Give A Giving Gift
Most animal lovers will appreciate a gift that helps protect animals any time of year. From Lush’s Charity Pot donating proceeds to organisations supporting animal protection, to iltm’s clothes that donate to animal shelters, give a gift that gives back.
Best Places To Buy
Animal Art
Art can be a tricky thing to buy for someone, but if you think you know their style well enough, a piece of art from a local artist can be the perfect lifelong gift.
Best Places To Buy
Birdhouse
This gift only really works if your giftee has a tree to hang a birdhouse on. Otherwise, they might get into some guerrilla birdhousing around the neighbour to find a home for your gift. Which could end up being an adventure in and of itself. Either way, birdhouses provide multiple benefits to the environment including helping birds survive year-round, making it an ideal give for an animal lover.
Best Places To Buy
For The Reader
Sustainable Living Book
Whether your giftee is a sustainable living veteran or a newbie to the cause, knowledge is power. Give the gift of learning more about how to live a sustainable and eco-friendly life.
Best Books To Buy
- Simply Living Well: A Guide To Creating A Natural, Low-waste Home
- Attainable Sustainable: The Lost Art Of Self-reliant Living
- The Little Book of Cottagecore: Traditional Skills for a Simpler Life
Slow Travel Book
Combine two passions into one book and get your giftee a book on slow and sustainable travel. Slow travel is all about adventuring more mindfully and taking your time as you explore new places and cultures – the perfect eco-friendly gift for a travelling fiend who likes to read.
Best Places To Buy
- The Slow Traveller: An intentional path to mindful adventures
- Slow Escapes: Rural Retreats For Conscious Travelers
- Slow Travel: A Movement
Zero Waste Cookbook
84% of Canadians like to cook at home but we tend to waste a lot of food in the process, 50 million tonnes every year. Zero waste cooking has become a popular movement encouraging people to waste less, or nothing at all, making it the perfect gift for the home cook in your life.
Best Places To Buy
For The Fashionable
Sustainable Sunglasses
Sunglasses aren’t just for summer, they can help protect your eyes from ultraviolet (UV) light year-round. Traditional glasses are often made of plastics with 4 million pairs being thrown away every year in North America. But sustainable sunglasses, often made of wood, decompose at the end of their life without adding to the massive trash pile in the ocean.
Best Places To Buy
Eco-Friendly Jewellery
Jewellery doesn’t generally have the best reputation for being ethical or sustainable with dangerous mining practices often taking place to get to the precious metals and stones used. But some brands have decided to take jewellery down a more eco-friendly path meaning a more sustainable sparkle for your giftee.
Best Places To Buy
Hats With A Purpose
Keep your giftee’s head warm with a long lasting, stylish and sustainable hat. Whether it’s a fashion forward wide brimmed number or a cozy toque for winter, with eco-friendly fashion brands increasing in Canada you’re sure to find something that fits like a glove, or hat.
Best Places To Buy
For The Playful
Board Games
A classic board game can bring hours of screen-free entertainment or inadvertently provide hours of arguments. Either way, it encourages people to spend time together. While not all board games are eco-friendly (many come with plastic pieces), some companies focus on wooden or cardboard games that do less damage to the planet and can make a great gift.
Best Places To Buy
Games That Educate
Games are an excellent way to learn more in an engaging, and dare I even say, fun environment. If your giftee spends too much time watching climate news on social media, a board game might be just the ticket to switch things up and learn through play instead.
Best Places To Buy
Wooden Toys For Kids
If you have kids (or forever kids) in your life, a wooden puzzle or toy is a great non-toxic, eco-friendly gift to keep them busy for hours.
Best Places To Buy
Sustayn is designed to present the most useful recommendations for environmentally friendly approaches and items. We update links when possible, but note that links can be broken and pricing, where noted, can be subject to change.
