Sending your clients and staff gifts shows that you appreciate them. However, Christmas can be a hard time to put ethics into practice. It’s more important than ever to be ethically minded, ensuring your gifts are responsibly sourced, packaged and delivered.
We need to think more about our planet and the choices we make which affect it; giving a gift is no different. Choosing the right gift for your clients and staff says a lot about you as a business. Choosing eco-friendly, sustainable gifts shows you want to help and understand that something needs to change, and little things add up.
To gift ethically this Christmas avoid sending large gifts unless you can source a carbon-neutral courier. Instead, opt for sending gift cards or e-cards, this gives the person receiving it the choice to make an ethical purchase. If you want to give a physical gift, look for practical, useful items made ethically and sustainably. There are three things you must think about when purchasing gifts, no matter what time of year:
- What is it made from?
- Will it actually be used?
- How will it be disposed of at the end of its life?
What else can you do?
Impact the environment
Give your customers a lifelong, meaningful and sustainable gift of a tree. Supporting forests and biodiversity is a great way to help the environment. Check out Ecotree they buy land and convert it into sustainable forests, planting gifted trees. They also have a great carbon footprint calculator which will allow you to see how much CO₂ you produce.
Give to charity
This can be particularly meaningful and there’s a plethora of choices, here are just a few examples; the gift of clean water through Unicef, Shelters’ “Gift of Hope” will buy toys for needy children or donate food to your local food bank. This choice is very personal and says a lot about you as a business.
Gifting your own time
You might even consider gifting your own time – offer each of your clients an hour of your time. It may sound like a silly idea, but your experience and knowledge are valuable commodities and would be greatly received by your customers.
Remember, ethical gifts at Christmas are never easy, but always warmly received.
Check out our previous blog post regarding mental health at Christmas.
