As the festive season approaches, the spirit of giving often comes wrapped in a troubling amount of overconsumption and single-use packaging. For those seeking a more conscious approach, we've curated a selection of thoughtful presents that deliver joy without contributing to landfill.
Gifts That Support Communities And Charities
This year, cut the tat and keep the joy by choosing presents that support independent brands, charities, and communities. We've tried and tested a range of options—from bath-time luxuries to nature-positive accessories—to help you avoid mass-produced items and last-minute throwaway gifts.
Social Stories Club offers a winter warmer hamper for £36, a plastic-free parcel of seasonal treats. Its conscious curation includes loose-leaf mulled wine Darjeeling tea that funds education in growing regions, gingerbread hot chocolate that pays for school meals, and handcrafted lavender candles that empower underserved communities in India.
For £5.95, Aarven incense from Plum & Belle provides aromatic sticks from a Margate-based brand that supports Indian artisans with disabilities. Beautifully wrapped, scents include ylang ylang and sandalwood.
From Choose Love, you can give the gift of a warmer winter coat to a refugee child in a displaced community, with prices starting from £15. Since 2016, shoppers have bought more than £13m worth of items through this charity's shop.
Eco-Conscious Products For A Lower Impact
Blästa Henriët offers a therapeutic wheat bag for £21. This British-made, Oeko-Tex-certified linen pouch filled with Cotswold wheat can be heated or chilled, providing a natural alternative to chemical-filled ice packs.
The Green & Blue beepot, priced at £36.40 from Wildcare, is a dual-purpose planter and bee hotel. Made in the UK using waste material from Cornwall's china clay industry, it provides a home for solitary bees, which make up 90% of UK bee species.
Silk & Bears presents hand-dyed mulberry silk scarves from £35, sourced from Vietnamese artisans in traditional weaving villages. This UK-based mother-and-daughter-run brand offers high-quality scarves, including a generously long option in deep fuchsia.
For those hard to buy for, Laro naturally whitening toothpaste at £12.99 provides a luxury version of an everyday essential. This female-founded, plastic-free brand blends pharmaceutical knowledge with natural ingredients and supports tree-planting through Greenspark.
Sustainable Choices For Home And Lifestyle
Hotel, Mike bath and body salts, available for £30 through Brimm, offer a luxurious bathing experience. Made in a factory running on renewable energy using natural fermentation, these salts feature zingy scents of ginger, vetiver, and grass. Brimm sends 10% of all member purchases to its Planet fund, granting suppliers money to tackle environmental impact.
Bookshop.org gift cards from £5 allow you to invest in independent booksellers, with digital tokens valid for two years. For a physical book, 'A Poem for Every Question' by Brian Bilston offers fun facts for curious minds.
Arthouse Unlimited provides chocolates and soaps from £2.75, decked in colourful illustrations by artists living with diverse learning and physical disabilities. Their vegan products are paraben-free, with new options like Hugging Animals-design dark chocolate with mint and crystal crunch.
Craghoppers x National Trust borage women's vest costs £40 and features a plant-based water-repellent sheen, perfect for outdoor enthusiasts. This nature-positive, zero-waste brand receives strong recommendations.
Ancient + Brave Immunity drops, priced at £34, offer a Soil Association-certified organic tincture of botanicals and nutrients to help ward off winter colds. The brand pledges 2% of revenue from every product to environmental causes and social initiatives.
Air plants from Love Tillys, starting at £2.49, provide low-maintenance greenery that absorbs nutrients through its leaves, requiring no soil and minimal watering.
For jewellery lovers, Ishkar stack rings at £50 are handcrafted by artisans in Kabul from sterling silver and gold-plated sterling silver, supporting Afghan communities and preserving traditional metalworking techniques.
Saicho Osmanthus sparkling tea at £21.99 offers an alcohol-free alternative with fragrant, hand-plucked blossoms married with Fujian mountain single-blend oolong, cold-brewed in English spring water. This supports farming communities in Xianyou, China.
A subscription to The Happy News from £4.99 delivers a colourful, 32-page newspaper published every three months, filled with positive stories as a counter to typical negative headlines.
Amber Rubarth's Cover Crop album and seed pack for £14 allows recipients in the US to plant cover crops that regenerate farmland while enjoying music rearrangements from Supertramp to the Beatles.
Finally, a zero-waste bag from TerraCycle for £35 lets you fill and label hard-to-recycle items like Christmas decorations. For every bag sold, TerraCycle plants two trees, helping address the UK's household waste recycling rate of just 44%.
