Great Gifts For Sustainability Lovers & Self-Sufficient Living
Struggling with ideas for gifts for a sustainability lover? Or maybe you are one and you need an easy list to share with others? We’ve put together a guide for sustainability lovers and self-sufficient living to help!
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The holidays are a wonderful opportunity to spend time with loved ones and celebrate. But it can also be stressful! Part of the stress can be finding gifts for those around you. To add to that, the holidays can be one of the most wasteful seasons with millions of tons of waste produced and ending up in landfills each year, including unwanted gifts.
So maybe you are working towards living a more sustainable lifestyle or you are struggling with gift ideas for an eco-conscious individual. Well, we’ve put together this guide on gifts ideas for those sustainability lovers, self-sufficient individuals, and modern homesteaders that might help you out!
What do you buy an eco-friendly person for Christmas?
An eco-friendly person is looking for items ethically manufactured, made with sustainable materials, and shipped with eco-friendly packaging standards. It can be basic, functional gifts that help them with their sustainable journey from reusable items or electric composters to garden seeds or canning supplies.
An open communication policy with gifts is a great way to buy something for an eco-friendly person for Christmas. Ask for a list from people of items they need/want or just bluntly ask if they have the item you’re wanting to get. A gift someone will actually use and reuse is a great eco-friendly gift.
Related – Eco-friendly Online Shopping Alternatives For Amazon
Now let’s get to some eco-friendly gift ideas for sustainability lovers and self-sufficient living!
Gifts for Sustainability Lovers
Experience Gift Coupons or Vouchers
A great way to eco-consciously gift is by gifting an experience rather than a physical object. Experiential gifts can be almost anything from a woodworking or cooking class to cocktail tasting to axe-throwing or concert tickets.
It creates less waste as no physical gift is involved and creates memories. If you still want to have something physical to give, then make a gift coupon or voucher telling them what experience you’re gifting (aka a card!).
Safety Razor
A big way sustainability lovers are reducing waste is by swapping out their personal care and bathroom products. A safety razor makes a big impact by replacing all that plastic waste from disposable razors.
It’s a little of an investment, but the Leaf razor with its pivoting-head is a game-changer and your sustainability lover will love it! It personally took away any fear of cutting ourselves away unlike most safety razors.
While you can get the Leaf razor on Amazon, there’s Package Free Shop, Zero Waste Store, and Grove Collaborative who all carry it and are good alternatives to the giant online retail store.
Related – The Best Safety Razor – An Honest Leaf Razor Review
Electric Composter
Food waste is another big environmental issue currently, and many sustainability lovers are starting to compost to reduce that waste. While there are a ton of ways to compost, sometimes people need a compact solution or a more hands-off solution. Electric composters for food waste can be that solution.
Our Vitamix Foodcycler is a great electric composter that we every couple of days as part of our composting system in the suburbs. While electric composters don’t actually generate compost due to high heat, they create soil amendment by-products that can be utilized in gardens, pots, and planting beds after a short period. So a great solution and a great gift if you’re willing to invest in it.
Related – Is An Electric Composter Right For You? – Honest Vitamix Foodcycler Review
Reusable Lighter
If you’re looking for a smaller budget-friendly gift or stocking stuffer, then a reusable lighter is perfect. We use it to light fires or candles in our household. Below are a few of our favorite Hyggelight candles that can be used as planters after the candle is finished!
Loose Leaf Tea Infuser
Have a tea lover who is tired of tea bags containing plastic? A loose leaf tea infuser is a great sustainable alternative to traditional tea bags. Both an organic linen reusable tea bag or a stainless steel tea infuser work great paired with some loose leaf tea as a cozy eco-friendly gift.
Gifts for Self-Sufficient Living & Homesteaders
Solar Phone Charger
There’s probably someone in your life who constantly needs a phone recharge in the middle of the day. (Me…I’m that person…) A solar phone charger is like having a portable battery pack charged by the sun! It’s a great way to introduce a little green renewable energy into charging the mini computers we almost always are carrying.
It’s also great for avid campers who might want a simple solar charger dedicated for their phone.
Related – The Best 5 Solar Powered Generators For Home
Garden Seeds
Gift something that grows for those self-sufficient lovers, gardeners, and homesteaders. Wouldn’t a basket full of awesome beautiful seeds be wonderful for someone wanting to grow more this coming year.
Here are some great seed companies to pick from:
- Baker Creek Seeds
- Johnnys Seeds
- Westcoast Seeds
- Ferry Morse Seed – available at Home Depot & Lowe’s
This is something I want as a gift this year as I cannot wait to plant in our terraced vegetable garden again!
Weeding Sickle
A homesteader or anyone with a garden will do some weeding at some point, so gift them an item they’ll use over and over again during the growing season. We stumbled upon this Japanese Weeding Sickle, which is one of the best tools we’ve used. It’s a good tool for weeding more efficiently than by hand saving time and keeping your gardener happy.
Canning Supplies
Canning supplies are also a great item to gift because it’s super functional, reused a lot, and you might even get back some of the canned deliciousness as a gift to you!
Any canner is almost always on the hunt for more jars and lids. Personally, we have loved the traditional Ball brand jars and lids. You can get them almost anywhere like Walmart, Target or Amazon. They’re super reliable and come in so many assorted sizes and styles to fulfill any canner’s needs.
If they’re a canner wannabe and don’t have the basic equipment yet, consider a generous gift like the Presto 23 Qt. Pressure Canner. It’s a flat-bottom canner, so it can be used with most electric stovetops (always check the stove manufacturer to ensure it’s safe for pressure canning). It also doubles as a water bath canner, so one less canning item to own. The Presto canner is the one we use and love!
Dutch Oven For Bread-making
A dutch oven is a staple for good bread-making, in our opinion! It seems to help the loaf get more volume, create a crispy crust, and overall a more artisan-looking loaf.
Caraway Dutch Oven is a highly recommended dutch oven with its non-toxic, non-stick cooking surface. The company has ethical manufacturing standards, ships products with zero plastic in recycled cardboard, and produces coatings that release 60% less CO2 compared to traditional non-stick coatings.
However, we personally have a cheaper cast iron Dutch Oven that has worked really well for our bread-making.
Books
Books are the way I personally have learned a lot about homesteading, self-sufficient living and sustainable living. Moreover, books make wonderful eco-friendly gifts and are budget-friendly. Consider purchasing books from a secondhand store or Bookshop.
Bookshop is an online marketplace specifically for buying books. However, if you purchase through Bookshop instead of other big retailers (like Amazon), then 10% of each sale is donated to an independent bookstore. Why not give back and help independent bookstores thrive in the age of e-commerce.
I have some of my favorite sustainable living and homesteading books linked there (as well as baby & kid’s books), so check it out!
Shop Secondhand
A great way to reduce waste caused by consumerism culture is to shop secondhand. Whether you call it thrifting, secondhand shopping or something else, you can likely find a lot of items secondhand. Here are just a few ideas for eco-friendly secondhand gifts:
- Used Bikes & scooters
- Used sports equipment
- Tools
- Home decor
- Pre-loved homeware items like vases, lamps, baskets & kitchen supplies
- Books
- Toys
Shop local stores and check out your local Buy Nothing Groups or Facebook Marketplace. Or try online thrift and secondhand stores like Ebay, ThredUp, BackMarket, and even some Etsy shops.
Secondhand shopping typically does take more time to find something of quality that will make a good gift. But it can be cheaper than buying new, give items an extended life, and keep them out of the landfill.
More Eco-friendly & DIY Gift Guides
Hope this ideas list of gifts for sustainability lovers and self-sufficient individuals helps you find the perfect gift. If you’re one of those people, then share list with your family and friends! Check out our other eco-friendly and DIY gift guides for more ideas no matter the occasion.
With this guide, hopefully deciding on an eco-friendly gift for sustainability lovers and self-sufficient living should be less stressful! Let us know what your suggestions on sustainable gifts in the comments below!
Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links, and I will earn a commission if you purchase through these links. Please note that I’ve linked to these products purely because I recommend them and they are from companies I trust. There is no additional cost to you.
