If you’d like people to be environmentally friendly with their gifts (AND you don’t want the same-old, same-old), you need to create a gift registry populated with items from fair trade stores to ensure that the least energy possible has been used to create your homewares and so on.

You could always register your wedding gifts with online stores which stock eco-friendly items. One of the best-known ones is Viva Terra (all of its products are organic, sustainable, earth-friendly and hand-crafted by artisans) where you can buy bamboo fabric sheets, Adirondack chairs made from reclaimed wood, or copper leaf-shaped night lights, for example.

Greenfeet has a wide range of inexpensive eco-friendly gifts which are guaranteed to be conversation-starters – what about a composting bin, or a vintage pool ball wine bottle stopper?

Others might choose to forego traditional gifts altogether at the cleverly named non-profit organisation Changing The Present. This website encourages you to select gifts from hundreds of non-profit organisations representing over 30 cause categories. Guests simply select the gift which means the most to them and your relationship. You might donate 10 books for a library for $50, or for the same price, teach 100 rural people about financial literacy, or provide a prosthetic limb so someone can learn to walk again.

Tags: environmentally friendly, fair trade gifts, gift registry, wedding gifts

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 6:28 am and is filed under engagement gifts, gift registry, wedding gifts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.