Local specialties make the best sustainable gifts
It's that time of year again - when every publication is putting out gift guides. Treehugger's includes things like Hawaiian honey, Californian cheese, Alaskan caviar, and bamboo from who knows where.
It's great that they're highlighting sustainably produced products, and I applaud them for some of the choices on the list. But I can't really get behind the larger idea, that people all over the country are choosing gifts off the same list and calling them sustainable.
If you want to give a sustainable gift, why not look locally? You'll find plenty of gems that didn't make any nationwide lists (and your recipients won't say "oh, it's that artisan honey from Treehugger"). Every town, every area, is unique with its own selection of crops that grow well and ideas that circulate. Just think of the last time a national food magazine got all googly-eyed about something that was growing in your community for years - like celeriac, or Riesling wines, or burgundy beans.
If you live in a different area than your recipient, gifts that are local to you become personalized - you can say, here is a wine made in my town. Or, here is a jar of watermelon pickles I made from a 19th-century recipe.
Here's one way to find appropriate local/homemade gifts to give: ask yourself, "What do I have (or have access to) that my recipient doesn't? And how can I share it?"
As an easy example, I live in Finger Lakes wine country, and most of my relatives live in the midst of Pennsylvania's state liquor store system. There are hundreds of great wines here that they can't buy back home, or don't even know exist. (Well, now they do - I frequently get requests to bring home some Tug Boat Red or Liberty Spy.)
What does your region have that would make a great sustainable gift?