If you’re looking for the perfect gift for a favorite vegan or vegetarian in your life, we’re here to help you out with our 2022 Vegan Gift Guide! We’ve pulled together some great vegan gift ideas to help make your shopping a bit easier this holiday season.
You can listen to us discuss these lovely gifts below or read on for a summary.
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Writing our Vegan Gift Guide Gets Easier Every Year!
Every year, writing our vegan gift guide seems to get easier because there are more and more vegan and eco-friendly gifts to choose from. The items we’ve selected for our gift guide aren’t all about delicious vegan food; we’ve also included some personal development and eco-friendly gifts.
1. Donation to a Local Pet Rescue or Animal Sanctuary
Is there a more thoughtful gift for your favorite plant-based friend or family member than a donation in their name to a local pet rescue or animal sanctuary? Donating to local no-kill shelters is always a great idea because it helps the animals and the community alike.
A simple Google search for “no-kill shelters near me” will help you locate some of your city’s shelters. You can also check out these animal sanctuaries we love.
2. Plum Deluxe Tea
Back in episode 209 of the podcast, we interviewed Andy Hayes of
Be sure to check out their membership option as well. It’s a great gift for the tea lover in your life!
Plum Deluxe teas are fresh, organic, and fair trade with no harsh chemicals and bizarre fake flavorings to provide an amazing tea experience.
3. Lush
We love Lush because they are committed to practices that protect and serve animals, the environment, and their customers. Their site contains details about their ethical campaigns, including one to combat trophy hunting, and ongoing campaigns to help save the planet and promote human rights initiatives.
100% of their products are vegetarian and 95% are vegan (a few contain honey or lanolin). All of their ingredients are cruelty-free and responsibly sourced.
We’ve used several Lush products over the past few years, from bath bombs and soy candles to deodorant (you can learn more about that in episode 325 of the podcast).
4. Full Focus Planner
When it comes to keeping track of appointments, tasks, and projects (whether for home or for work), everyone has opinions about how to do it. Digital systems work better for some, while others prefer keeping their busy lives organized on paper.
For the paper-based productive in your life, Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner might be just the thing. It’s more than just a daily planner to track your appointments and to-do lists. The Full Focus Planner guides you to consider your short- and long-term goals and check in to make sure the things you’re working on are moving you toward those goals.
Larissa and I both use and love it!
5. Vegan Meal Delivery Subscription
Meal delivery subscriptions have become very popular in the past few years. In the beginning, these services contained few (if any) plant-based options. Now, a few short years later, many subscriptions cater to vegans (and other specialty lifestyles), with at least one, Purple Carrot, entirely dedicated to serving vegan and vegetarian clientele.
In episode 300 of the podcast (way back in 2019) we interviewed our friend Danielle Fried about her experience with four subscription services that either included vegetarian or vegan options or were entirely plant-based.
Splendid Spoon’s plant-based smoothies, soups, noodle, and grains bowls are low in sugar and sodium and delivered ready-to-eat.
6. Plant-Based Cookbooks
We’ve collected some amazing vegan and vegetarian cookbooks over the years. While the trend these days may be to find and store recipes online, there’s just something special about thumbing through a cookbook, marking your favorite recipes, and making notes in the margin.
Last year we shared 10 of the Best Vegetarian Cookbooks for Beginners. Check out that list or browse the aisles for ones your loved ones would enjoy.
7. Veg Zen Swag
I guess it wouldn’t be our gift guide if we didn’t mention The Vegetarian Zen Swag Shop over on TeePublic. We love TeePublic because they support independent artists. In addition to Vegetarian Zen-branded merchandise, we’ve added quite a few of their designs to our store, so when you purchase any merch through our store, you’re not only supporting a plant-based business (us!) but you’re also supporting independent artists.
A variety of t-shirts, hoodies, tanks, phone cases, totes, mugs, pens, and more!
8. Yeti Water Bottle
Investing in a good quality reusable water bottle can definitely save you money in the long run and, of course, greatly benefit the planet. According to earthday.org, Americans purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year. That averages out to 13 bottles per month for every person in the US! By using a reusable water bottle, you could save an average of 156 plastic bottles annually.
We love the stainless steel water bottles made by Yeti. They’re sturdy but can be a bit heavy (which is why they’re so sturdy!). Yeti water bottles come in a variety of sizes and colors and offer different types of caps.
9. Air Fryer
It took us a while to get an air fryer but we’re sure glad we did! Ours is multi-use; besides air frying, there are also settings for baking, broiling, convection baking and broiling, toasting, and warming. We use it for all sorts of things. Here’s our fryer along with our review.
10. Handmade with Love
A handmade or home-baked gift will truly show them you care. gift such as vegan gift basket to include fresh fruits, nut butters (such as almond or peanut butter) vegan cheese, dark chocolate, tea.
11. Plant-Based Cooking Course
Transitioning to a plant-based lifestyle can be overwhelming and a little intimidating. A good plant-based cooking course, or even a course teaching cooking basics, can really help ease that transition.
Rouxbe Online Cooking School offers a number of courses that exactly fit the bill. I’ve taken two of their courses (so far!): Culinary Rx, which teaches basic cooking skills; and Forks Over Knives, which focuses on
You can learn more about the Culinary Rx course in episode 385, and the Forks Over Knives course in this episode.
Great Stocking Stuffers
1. Tatuo 7-Piece Portable Stainless Steel Flatware Set
Say “I love you to the planet” by keeping plastic utensils out of landfills. These reusable portable stainless steel utensils are easy to carry in a purse or bag.
- Stainless steel cutlery set: includes 1 x knife, 1 x fork, 1 x spoon, 1 pair of chopsticks, 1 x bent straw, 1 x straight straw, 1 x straw brush, plus 1 x storage bag
- Material: made of good quality stainless steel metal, durable and healthy for daily use, comes with a brush, which is easy to clean the inside of the straw
2. Reusable Drinking Straws
Plastic drinking straws are no bueno…if you want a straw to sip your drink, go eco instead! There are many non-plastic options these days: paper, bamboo, glass, metal. Paper straws are easily biodegradable, while bamboo, glass, and metal ones are reusable.
3. Amazon Gift Card
Physical gifts are nice, but what do you get for someone who has everything? How about someone you don’t know well? Or someone with very specific tastes? Two words: gift card!
You can go with gift cards to specific stores if you like, but we love Amazon gift cards because they’re universal and allow the recipient to shop for pretty much anything under the sun (even a kitchen sink!).
4. Tofu Press
A simple tofu press takes preparing tofu from a heavy cookware balancing act to a few turns of knob or screws. They’re inexpensive and really get the job done to get the extra water out of tofu.
5. Silicone Baking Mats
I’ve been using aluminum foil and cooking spray on baking pans without thinking much about it FOREVER. However, as you can probably imagine, neither of them are great for the planet. Luckily there are some great eco-friendly swaps for baking. A silicone baking mat and and a silicone liner are the perfect replacements for foil and cooking spray.
We hope we’ve given you some good plant-based and eco-friendly gift ideas as you head to the mall or hop online to shop during this gift-giving season.