Green Gift Giving

December 12, 2018

By Miranda Hunter, Bow Seat Intern

The holidays are my favorite time of the year. Filled with family, friends, food, and hopefully a few days off, there’s not much to complain about! It also is a season of excess; we order expensive gifts from all corners of the world, growing our carbon footprint and the hole in our wallets. Here are some tips to be ocean- and cost-conscious this holiday sea-son.

Holiday Cards

Opting for e-cards is certainly the most environmentally friendly way to share family photos with your extended network through sites like greenevelope.com and bluemountain.com, but if you choose to stick to the more traditional route of mailing holiday cards, be sure to source companies that use sustainable or recycled products or give back by offsetting their carbon footprint or planting trees.

Gift Wrapping and Packaging

• Save and reuse all gift wrapping material given to you, especially gift bags! This will save you last-minute trips to the store, money, and time.
• Another substitute to buying new wrapping paper is a little DIY: using and decorating old paper grocery bags. This makes every aspect of the gift seem more personal and special.
• Skip anything glittery! These sparkly pieces of microplastic end up littering our waterways.

Gift Giving

• Every year we struggle to find appropriate, reasonably priced, and useful gifts for our loved ones. Instead of spending so much time online shopping or sifting through countless stores in the mall, you could make a donation to your loved ones’ favorite charity in their names.
• If you prefer giving tangible gifts, visit craft and holiday fairs to support local artists and small businesses in order to minimize your carbon footprint.
• For ideas on DIY gifts made from items you might have lying around the house, check out this awesome article, 40 DIY Gifts For Absolutely Everyone on Your List.
• Other great ocean-friendly gifts include:
  • Planet Love Life creates bracelets out of recovered ghost nets and salvaged fishing line, and each bracelet represents one of the 300+ marine animal species that are affected by fishing gear lost at sea. Sale proceeds benefit coastal cleanup projects and nonprofit partners.
  • A subscription to a local co-op or Imperfect Produce, an awesome company that helps fight food waste by delivering “ugly produce,” the fruits and veggies that would usually be thrown away by grocery stores because they are not aesthetically pleasing.
  • Hydro Flask, a water bottle that has developed a strong cult following in the past few years, is the perfect gift for someone who is always on the move. Hydro Flask’s charity, Parks For All, supports the development and maintenance of public green spaces around the United States.
  • Lush Cosmetics is dedicated to offering 100% vegetarian cosmetics in conscious packaging, buying and making ethically, and fighting against animal testing. They are not only paving the way for more environmentally friendly cosmetics practices throughout the world, but they also have something for everyone on your list – including bath products, makeup, lotions, and shaving products.
  • Patagonia is an amazing outdoors-wear company dedicated to fighting climate change and creating long-lasting, sustainable clothing. They recently made headlines by donating the $10 million the company saved in corporate tax cuts to organizations fighting climate change.