At TRVST, we believe we should all be thinking of gifting zero waste and plastic-free. For the women in your life that deserve treating or recognizing, we’ve compiled our gift guide featuring ethical gift ideas for her.
Why plastic-free and ethical gifts? Simply, we make far too much of the stuff, and much of it only gets used once. Of the 300 million tonnes of plastic we produce every year, half is considered disposable or single-use, and 40% comes from packaging.
And with growing awareness highlighting the plastic problem, we don’t doubt that she will appreciate your efforts to buy sustainable gifts that are better for the planet.
Giving plastic-free and zero waste makes for a small yet essential choice to reduce a bit of trash from eventually clogging up our landfills or, worse, polluting the natural environment.
Click to Jump to Ethical Gifts for Her:
Or as near plastic-free, as we could find. We hope you enjoy our gift guide full of sustainable gifts and products made from ethically sourced materials and ingredients. Click around for sustainable gift choices she’ll love.
These luxury additions to her candle collection count as a great ethical gift. Especially for anyone who loves and collects candles.
The majority of candles you’ll find across gift stores, and supermarkets get made from paraffin. And they make paraffin from petroleum. Hence it’s similar to plastic in many ways. Therefore when looking to make an ethical gift purchase for her, soy candles are a great choice.
Related: 17 Best Eco Friendly Candles
They come with many benefits. Soy candles get made from soybeans and usually from sustainable sources for the majority of eco-friendly candles on the market. They burn cleaner, last longer, and provide a better base for scents.
We’re confident that she’ll love these soy candles. PureBellissimo makes these “LOVE SPELL” candles by hand from 100% natural soy wax. Scented with orange, peach, cherry blossom and white jasmine they’ll have her room smelling amazing.
This seller only ships throughout the US. Click the button below to have a browse of the full range of soy candles on Etsy for a choice near you.
Buy "Lovespell" or browse soy way candles on Etsy
Giving the gift of green is one of those sustainable gift ideas that keeps giving. Peace Lilies even make for some of the best houseplants to clean the air around us. Studies have shown that they can help remove nasties from our air, including carbon monoxide and benzene.
She’ll find them easy to care for, and they suit a shady spot making them perfect for indoors. They also flower all year round.
If possible, buy them from a garden center or mail order in a non-plastic pot. Or ask your garden center to re-pot them out of the plastic into terracotta or similar before you take them home so that the original plastic containers are reused at the garden center.
Emie Grace Designs’ hand makes this set of 5 bracelets to order. Of the 5, two come with a floral pattern, and three skinnier designs complete the collection. Emie Grace hammers them by hand for a slight vintage and oxidized look.
Given you get five different bracelets, the recipient of this lovely sustainable and ethical gift for her can mix and match to suit their feelings and style. As a result, this gift makes for a particularly good choice if you’re not quite sure which style she might prefer.
Given that they are handcrafted items to order, you can select her size when buying. And each is made unique.
This gift listing is from an Etsy seller in the US and ships internationally. Therefore, if buying for someone else in the world, consider it might take a little while longer to ensure the bracelets arrive on time.
Not quite right? Click below to browse Etsy’s jewellery and accessories products for her. Etsy makes for a great place to find a unique, handcrafted choice from bracelets through necklaces, earrings and many other choices. Many of their selections come free from plastic.
Buy this Emma Grace Design on Etsy
Many people’s beauty routines include cotton pads, cotton bud products, and moist cleansers or wet wipes. However, when thinking about ethically sourced gifts, many may not immediately think about the harm pads to cleanse or remove makeup may cause to the environment.
Each has different environmental impacts with wet wipes, arguably the worst offenders. Some have called them a hidden plastic menace.
You may also not know that the vast majority of wet wipes do contain non-biodegradable plastic. The big brands use plastic in their production to prevent the wipes from breaking up due to their moisture content.
Related: 12 Best Alternatives to Wet Wipes
Further, we get through millions of wet wipes and their variations every year. To provide some sense of scale, Arthur Julius, a prominent US manufacturer, churns out 125bn wet wipes every year. And that’s just a handful of brands in one country, albeit a big one.
The other problem with wipes and pads get flushed after use. And the problem doesn’t stop there. Studies have shown wet wipes cause 93% of sewage blockages in the UK2.
Meanwhile, many women use at least two disposable cotton pads every day during their beauty routines. Disposable cotton pads may not contain plastic, yet they are no environmental saint.
Cotton takes a considerable amount of resources to produce. A single t-shirt, for instance, takes about 2720 liters of water to produce. Many of what we might consider standard fare are also note fair trade.
Gifting eco-friendly reusable pads make for a brilliant ethical gift for the environmentally conscious woman who wears makeup often or who has an active skincare routine. Our plastic-free reusable cotton pad pick comes in a variety of patterns, complete with an accompanying drawstring bag. Hand made, sustainable, and a great ethically-minded gift she’ll love.
And the best news? She can wash and reuse these pads. Hence you give a gift she’ll love that will help reduce the use of those nasty wet wipes and cut down on disposable cotton pads.
At least this way they get made once and reused rather than the flushed products after a single-use. And they look great too.
While talking cleansing routines and bathroom products, we love this Bumper Bathroom Bundle. All the products she might like for a plastic-free bathroom experience in one bundle.
The bundle also includes reusable pads alongside a bamboo toothbrush and cotton buds. The special women in your life will appreciate their natural materials and eco-friendly sustainable products. Gifting the bathroom bumper bundle will save a good few plastic buds and plastic toothbrushes from ever needing to be bought in the first place.
We particularly love that this bundle comes with a smoothing skin bar, scented soap selection, and a shampoo bar. Bars are a great alternative to liquid shampoos, shower gels, and other cleansing products that mostly come in plastic bottles.
And if that wasn’t enough, you can pick from different soap scents. Everything from candyfloss, through tea tree and lemon. The shampoo bar comes in 5 different types according to the needs of your gift recipient. Coloured, sports, and all hair types will suit most people, no doubt if you’re unsure.
We’ve featured a UK seller that does ship internationally. Do check shipping times for gifts. US readers might also like the different but equally inviting Sweet Sunshine Gift Box.
Today we see sustainable and zero-waste makeup products increasingly becoming both more prominent and accessible. And there’s a good reason. In 2018 studies showed that the beauty industry produced 120bn units of cosmetic product packaging (Zero Waste Europe). A great deal of which consists of single-use plastic.
Of course, it doesn’t help that most beauty products come in multiple small plastic tubes and containers. And as brands pursue a luxurious feel, they usually make packaging from a more substantial weight plastic than they need.
Meanwhile, a 2017 survey found that 37% of women intend to buy more green beauty products in the next two years. However, as yet, you’ll be hard pushed to walk into any cosmetic section of a chemist or department store and find refill stations in the same we are starting to see for foodstuffs.
In response, many smaller challenger products have entered the market with improved eco-friendly, fair trade, and plastic-free credentials to address the environmental impact of cosmetics.. When looking for ethical gifts, do give them a browse and your support.
For our cosmetic pick, we love this vegan-friendly lip scrub. Hand made from coconut and sweet almond oil it will leave her lips lovely and smooth. The products come in plastic-free tins. This item ships to order from Norway so again do allow for shipping when shopping for a gift.
Back in the bathroom, bath bombs make for excellent ethical giving. Popularised by LUSH, the UK founded cosmetics firm, bath bombs have been around since 1989. And have become one of those luxury bathroom accessories perfect for relaxing. Did you know the fizz of Alka Seltzer initially inspired them?
Today there are loads of other brands proffering up all sorts of products with unique scents and fizzes. By all means, go for the lush originals. However, our choice of an up and comer helps to support new ideas, products, and ranges. And we like to assist the underdogs.
LifeAround2Angels have created these bath bombs, which were inspired by bath time with the founder’s two daughters.
As such, we’re sure this selection of 12 handcrafted bombs will provide perfect bath time fizz for the special someone in your life. And each of their products featured in this guide come individually wrapped plastic-free.
At the point of purchase, you can choose the flavours and scents or receive an assortment. Choices include black raspberry, vanilla, mango papaya and shea and coconut. Or check out their store where you can mix and match to your heart's content for the perfect gift.
Not everyone is the glitter type. However, if the woman for whom you are seeking a plastic-free gift enjoys a music festival or simply likes to sparkle, then eco-friendly glitter is another excellent choice.
The good news is we can now all choose eco-friendly glitter. Our choice here comes from Eco Glitter Fun. Started by two self-confessed party animals on a mission, Eco Glitter fun sells “responsible sparkles” that the women will love. They also help to gain awareness of the plastic waste issue we now face.
They make their wide variety of colors and glitter sparkles from ethically sourced biodegradable cellulose film. The materials have been tested as ethically sound and accredited to the Bio-glitter standard, meaning you can trust that they won’t last forever.
Every planet aware coffee drinker knows that paper cups are no good. Much like some of the other hidden plastic offenders in this guide, disposable coffee cups also contain plastic to ensure they can hold your hot drink.
Next up in our list of ethical gifts for women, we consider the disposal of coffee cups.
Our next sustainable gifting idea for her is a couple of choices from the Ebos range of eco-friendly reusable coffee cups to go. Made from bamboo, they’re dishwasher safe, don’t contain any harmful chemicals, and are perfect gifts. They also come complete with a silicone sleeve to avoid finger burn.
Gifting a reusable coffee isn’t just good for the environment. Most coffee stores these days will provide a small discount if you bring your cup. So you can help your loved one prevent the wasteful use of paper cups while also helping them save a few cents with their morning coffee.
Ethical fashion and clothes are not always the easiest things to buy for someone else. However, your support for the new breed of ethical & sustainable clothing brands is a worthy choice.
You may not realize that when we wash our clothes, we release microfibers into the water. Research shows that this can be as much as 1.17grams per garment1. Thus, if our clothes contain synthetics at all, there's a decent chance with each wash we are leeching small amounts of microplastic into our wastewater.
Hence, buying sustainable fashion from ethical sources, while often neglected, helps fight against plastic pollution.
To inspire your ethical fashion gift choice take a look at Reve En Vert. They describe the brand as an answer to sustainable and honest luxury. With classic lines, staples, and everything from lingerie to accessories, you’ll almost certainly find something new to suit her.
All of their lines use organic and natural materials from ethical sources. Reven En Vert champions minimising waste and recycling whilst creating fashion that lasts.
Books are great sustainability gifts and this book is a must-read for every woman. It's an eye-opener to what happened to our local shoe and dressmakers, and how we feed the fast fashion industry. The book takes an in-depth and critical looks at how demand for these fast fashion items are impacting the environment and giving birth to the ethical fashion movement.
It's not just synthetic knits that introduce plastic into our wardrobes. Much of our footwear can contain plastic too, often in the stretch.
That’s why we love thought socks. Also doing their bit to champion ethical fashion, Thought make their socks from ethically sourced 54% bamboo, organic cotton, and a small amount of recycled polyester making them sustainable and fun with a vast choice of colors and patterns gift socks as a perfect sustainable fashion choice.
| 1 | Microfiber Masses Recovered from Conventional Machine Washing of New or Aged Garments. Niko L. Hartline, Nicholas J. Bruce, Stephanie N. Karba, Elizabeth O. Ruff, Shreya U. Sonar, and Patricia A. Holden. Environmental Science & Technology 2016 50 (21), 11532-11538. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.6b03045 |
| 2 | Wipes and sewer blockage study. Andy Drinkwater and Frank Moy. Water UK. 2017. |
guide
