As the holidays are coming up, it’s time to start thinking about what you’ll be asking for and giving others for Christmas this year. Traditionally, the holiday season is consumer-driven and therefore not necessarily very sustainable. People tend to choose quantity over quality, resulting in too many, unnecessary, polluting gifts wrapped in single-use packages. Yet, if chosen well, the gifts you give and receive at Christmas can allow you to live a more eco-friendly life instead. We’ve selected 10 gifts that will make your life more sustainable.
1. An indestructible water bottle
If you still haven’t got a reusable water bottle, it’s about time to change. Whether you’re going away for a weekend, working at the office or just relaxing in your own garden, keeping a bottle of fresh water at hand is always a good choice. Whereas before, refilling your bottle on the way could be quite the challenge, nowadays, there are many refill stations to be found and some businesses even offer you a free refill.
If you’ve already got some reusable bottles at home, please don’t add yet another one to your collection. Yet if you don’t, the Klean Kanteen Classic Single Wall (€27) is our top choice. Simple yet elegant and it will last you a long time.
2. A wormy composting bin
Generally speaking, worms inside your house is something we wouldn’t like to encourage for obvious reasons. Yet when those worms are living carefully inside your composting bin, you might be onto something. Composting your scraps is becoming more and more essential to live sustainably and composting bins with worms are the perfect solution for those who don’t have a garden to put a giant container. They’re smaller, can be very good looking if you choose well and transform your scraps much more quickly.
The composting bins by Circle (€159-€459 depending on model and size) are made in Portugal out of terracotta and are a real statement piece in your interior.
3. A beginner-friendly knife sharpener
Every cooking fanatic will know that even the best knives tend to lose their edge after a while. Even if you don’t drop them or mistreat them in any other kind of way, they just go blunt. Buying a new knife every time this happens isn’t just not the best financial decision, it’s also not very sustainable. Making such products requires quite a bit of energy and resources, meaning the longer you do with one and the same knife, the better – this is true for most objects in life. Buying a good knife sharpener will extend your knife’s life exponentially and by asking it as a gift, you won’t even have to make the investment yourself.
The Horl 3 Cruise (€99) is a knife sharpener well-suited for beginners as you “just” need to stick your knife to the magnet and roll away.
4. A cosy hot water bottle
One of the biggest expenses for most of us during winter time and one of the least sustainable ones is heating our home. And yet, living in the cold isn’t an option so there is not much you can do about it. Or is there? A hot water bottle might not make heating your home totally unnecessary and it shouldn’t, neither for your health nor for that of your home. But it might mean that you can set the temperature a bit lower or that you can turn it on for less time.
Whereas most hot water bottles are made out of not-so-sustainable plastic, the Japanese ‘yutanpo’ (€49) is a stainless steel container wrapped in a thick fabric. Better for the environment and handy, as you can even warm it up straight on the stove.
5. A sparkling water machine
Drinking water from the tap has become natural for many of us but there’s one exception: what if you want your water to be sparkling? You could of course choose to buy your bubbly water from the store but not only does that quickly become inconvenient, all those bottles aren’t exactly a treat for the environment either. Luckily, there are now quite a few carbonating machines on the market, allowing you to turn your tap water into a sparkling beverage within seconds.
The Aarke Carbonator (€157) might well be the most aesthetically pleasing version out there. You buy the machine once and replace the gas cylinders when needed.
6. A do-it-all soap
You might not per se think of it while you’re using your usual soaps but their environmental impact can be huge. From their ingredients to the packaging, from the manufacturing process to the transport: all those steps ask, yet again, for energy and resources. When looking for a more sustainable alternative, you thus want to opt for something with as little packaging as possible, with ingredients that harm our planet minimally and come in solid form.
The Marseille soap by Fer à Cheval can be bought in 4-kilogram packages (€49), doesn’t contain any palm oil (unlike many others) and can be used for pretty much anything. Simple yet efficient.
7. A safety razor
In our modern bathroom setups, many of the products we use tend to be polluting and hard if not impossible to recycle. Razors generally belong to that category. Plastic, metal and shaving products get mixed and eventually tossed into the bin, only to end up in a landfill not long after. By opting to use a so-called safety razor, however, you can drastically improve that situation.
A classic safety razor such as the Bambaw version (€27) has a sturdy, metal, reusable handle and just one metal blade, which doesn’t cost much and can be easily recycled. Using it asks for a bit of practice but once you’ve understood how it works, it’s just as easy as any other hair removal method.
8. A refillable toothbrush
Just like most razors, toothbrushes are a hard to recycle piece of bathroom equipment. And yet, we do need them and tend to go through them rather quickly, meaning you would be surprised by the pile of waste they create in just a year. Recently, quite a few companies have started offering refillable toothbrushes. Simply put, you only change the head of the brush and keep the handle.
Some of them are made out of bamboo, others are made from (recycled) plastic and the Berninox ones (€36 for the handle and a first head) come in stainless steel. A piece of design made in Switzerland which will stand out in your bathroom.
9. A snuggly blanket
We spoke above about hot water bottles allowing you to set the thermostat in your home a little lower. Yet if you’re not a fan of those or if you want to take things one step further, a snuggly blanket will keep you warm as well and will add a bit of cosiness to your interior. If you’re looking to buy a blanket as a gift or to put one on your wish list, the possibilities are almost endless. It is a timeless piece which can be found everywhere, from the supermarket to vintage shops and designer stores.
We particularly like the ones made by Maison Izard (€180), using French wool from the Hautes-Pyrénées region and manufactured in France.
10. A zero waste cookbook
Generally speaking, we humans aren’t very good at not wasting any food. We throw away quite a bit while cooking, leftovers get forgotten in the fridge and, as we often buy too much, some things turn bad before we’ve even touched them. If you want to turn around the way you cook and eat in order to waste less food, the right cookbook can do wonders.
“The Everlasting Meal Cookbook” by Tamar Adler (€35) focuses on putting your leftovers to good use and will have you looking differently at those scraps.
