As you may know, at Albatross Designs we often encourage gifting a lifetime of plastic free shaving to your friends and family instead of other, more wasteful, gifts. There’s another category of gifts that we get very excited about though: “Experience Gifts.”
Experience Gifts are great because they are plastic free, eco-friendly, and probably encourage your friends/family to try something they might not have otherwise. Quite frankly, experience gifts are often more exciting than physical gifts as many people already have too much stuff as it is!
So, here’s our 10 Favorite “Experience Gifts” for Friends and Family:
1. Tickets to an ethical aquarium like the Monterey Bay
There is nuance here. We don’t believe in keeping healthy animals in captivity. There are, however, places like the Monterey Bay Aquarium that do a tremendous amount in terms of conservation and education, and most importantly, they rehabilitate injured animals for release back into the wild and only keep animals that could not survive in the wild. They even have two rescued Laysan albatrosses named Makana and Alika, who although can’t fly anymore are really great gals to hang out with!
2. Gift certificate to a local restaurant
Any restaurant will do, but extra credit if there is a local and/or more plant-based restaurant near you to help show the incredible culinary possibilities of a more sustainable diet. For instance, if every person in America reduced their consumption of beef, pork, and poultry by a quarter, we’d save about 82 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year (Source: The New York Times).
3. Digital Subscriptions (Audible, Disney+, etc.)
A huge amount of immaterial happiness can ensue!
4. A local cooking class
As mentioned in #2, Extra Credit if the cooking class has a local and/or plant based focus, albeit any class will do! Mmmm, delicious!
5. Pass to an amusement park
This one is especially good for kids. So many toys these days are made of plastic. Here’s an opportunity to make memories not waste. Don’t forget to take pictures!
6. Tickets to a concert, play/musical, or comedy show
COVID-19 meant an absence of live music for many music lovers, which is quite sad. Luckily many venues are now reopening for live performances. There are also some great outdoor concerts popping up across the country to help create safer performances.
7. Take a ride around a race track with a professional driver
We don’t necessarily like the fossil fuel part of this one, but many tracks are now actually offering trips like this in electric cars! Perhaps you are surprised this one is on our list, but we won an experience like this once and it was actually pretty cool (and at times a little scary)!
8. Tickets for a sporting event
If your friend or family member likes a certain sport, tickets to see it live in person will likely make them quite happy! No senseless consumption here (just skip the chotchkies in the gift shop).
9. Pay for someone’s first lesson for something they may be interested in
This is one of our absolute favorites because our team is very passionate about both Sailing and Surfing. We’ve gifted many people 1st lessons for both and seen with our own eyes these initial lessons turn into lifetime pursuits.
10. Private tour (be it of a winery, local museum, or historical site)
We’ve all been to the museum, but having a tour guide can really enhance the experience.
