The Best Eco-Friendly Corporate Gifts to Buy Under $50

When you're shopping for a gift for a friend or a family member, it can be tricky, but it all comes down to finding something you know they'd like. The story changes when you're shopping for corporate gifts. Gifts for employees, gifts for coworkers, gifts for clients; there are a lot of connotations and considerations to keep in mind to get gifting just right.

While there are always easy options like gift cards, basic snack baskets, and the same stuff you put in your trade show swag bags, they can often come across as impersonal or lacking in consideration. It can also be difficult to find gifts that match your corporate ethics within these kinds of generic categories.

If you want eco-friendly gifts and you're on a budget, it can feel hopeless. What can you find that meets your needs, doesn't break the bank, and conveys your sentiments at the same time? Surely, there has to be something, right?

While there's only so much that we can do to help you with choosing the right products, we can give you plenty of ideas. From there, it's up to you to decide what works best as a gift for which people, what kinds of customizations you want to make (if any), and how you want to handle the whole corporate gifting process.

We put together this list to help you find something that fits the bill. Everything here is eco-friendly, suitable for a corporate gift for employees, clients, and others in the workplace, and clocks in at under $50. If you have any suggestions to add, let us know! And, of course, if there's anything in particular you see in our store that sounds like it works for you, drop us a line or make an order.

Travel Accessories

For the client or employee frequently on the go, travel accessories can make the trips a little easier. There are all sorts of different items you can find to give as gifts, but we recommend looking for something a little out of the ordinary or something the recipient is less likely to have already purchased for themselves. Then again, you never know what they have or what could use replacing.

Some potential ideas include:

• A travel neck pillow. If flights or train rides are common, a travel neck pillow can ease the stress of poor seating and cramped spaces. Cheap neck pillows are only $5, though you can never know for sure how eco-friendly they are. Nicer, guaranteed eco-friendly neck pillows are going to be more, with basic models clocking in at $20 and nicer options around $40.
• A sleep mask. Silk is the best material for a sleep mask, but it's tricky to call it fully eco-friendly due to the treatment of silkworms. Other organic fibers are also options. While really nice sleep masks are outside of our $50 budget, you can find plenty in the $20 to $40 range.
• A nice luggage tag. Anyone traveling frequently is going to want to have a luggage tag to help identify their bags, but these little labels are very easily forgotten. Every travel hub has its own little paper tags to fill out, but these aren't eco-friendly, and they're consumables. A nice leather or eco-friendly fabric tag can be a great option and won't run you more than $35 on the high end.

There are plenty of other options as well, from travel cosmetics to electronic accessories and more. Think about your recipient and what they might need, and consider just asking what they would like the most.

Snacks and Treats

Food and beverage gifts are often a coin flip. If you get something nice as a gift, it can go over very well; on the other hand, if you gift something to someone who ends up allergic to it or who doesn't like it, it feels like a waste. Whenever possible, make sure you either know the food preferences of your recipients or you give them options so they can pick the one that most appeals to them.

Potential snacks and treats include:

• Chocolates. Something like a box of fancy chocolate truffles or USA-made gimmick chocolates like chocolate golf balls can be fun options. Maybe not everyone likes or can have chocolate, but it's a solid baseline option for most people.
• Coffee or Tea. Coffee and tea are both delicious and commonplace beverages, and many eco-friendly indie shops offer sampler packs that can be great for beginners and experienced drinkers alike. Sometimes you even find a store like Good.Store that donates their profits to charity for a double-whammy in sustainability!
• Snack samplers. A simple search for "eco-friendly snack sampler" will bring you dozens of options by a variety of different brands, with a whole range of different themes, almost all of which come in under $50.

An alternative option would be to find a local restaurant or eco-friendly storefront that sells food, including local farmer's markets, and get relevant gift cards where available.

Personalized Utility Items

There are a ton of relatively cheap trinkets and items that can be useful but feel like a letdown as a gift. You can, however, elevate those gifts by showing a bit of attention to detail and having them customized.

Whether it's an engraved name, a printed design, or some other customization, you have a lot of options available to you:

• Customized Drinkware. Everyone drinks throughout the day, whether it's coffee, water, or something else. By gifting your corporate recipient a customized tumbler, an engraved set of glasses, or a printed water bottle, you can make it feel like more than just a cheap trinket.
• Tote Bags. While a tote bag itself isn't a great gift, it can be used to hold other gift items when you're stretching your budget, and a little bit of branding and customization can make it more memorable and valuable. Our store is full of options, so give it a look.
• Jackets. A nice jacket is a tricky gift because you need to know what size to give, but if you have that information, a personalized jacket can come in right under your budget and be an excellent gift that lasts for a long time.

One of the downsides is that eco-friendly items are already going to be a hair more expensive than their non-sustainable counterparts, and adding customization also increases the cost. That can mean you will find it harder to stay under your budget. Still, there's a lot to choose from if you know where to look.

Culinary Tools and Gadgets

Everyone has to eat at some point, and while some people don't cook for themselves very often, many of us do.

Kitchen implements and cooking accessories can make that process easier for everyone, and anything that helps us eat healthier is a win, right?

• Bamboo Cutting Boards. A good cutting board is a staple of any kitchen, but all too often, the only ones readily available are cheap plastic. Sure, they're easier to clean, but over time, they wear down and add more plastic to food and the environment. Meanwhile, a good bamboo cutting board is both eco-friendly and cheap. A set of three can be had for under $25 these days!
• A Spice Sampler. While you might not think about the ethics of spices, some spices are harvested in pretty bad conditions, and it can be beneficial to seek out eco-friendly alternatives. A small eco-friendly spice sampler can be under $50 (though most are more expensive), but you can also put one together yourself.
• A Good Kitchen Knife. Knives also aren't something you might think of as eco-friendly or not, but they certainly can be. The handles, for one thing, can be made of plastic or an eco-friendly material. The steel for the blade can come from a recycled source, as well. And, of course, a locally US-made knife is better than one shipped from overseas. A great knife can cost hundreds of dollars, but there are definitely good options for around $40-$50.

Kitchen items run the gamut, but the tricky part is finding something that's eco-friendly. Some items just don't have alternatives.

Do-It-Yourself Ecology

Very little could be more eco-friendly than bringing the ecology right to your own doorstep.

While not everyone has a green thumb (or the space available) to care for a garden, there are a variety of options you can provide to give them a shot at it, including:

• Organic Seeds. Eco-friendly and sustainably harvested seeds, particularly of heirloom varieties that can be less susceptible to local pests, can be a great option for getting a starter garden together.
• Home Grow Kits. These can range from windowsill planters to hydroponic systems. The more complex kits are easily a couple of hundred dollars, yeah, but small and introductory kits can be around $50.
• Tools and Resources. Gardening tools and resources like books and guides for eco-friendly pest control and co-planting can be fun options for the more botanically inclined.

This is definitely another of those kinds of gifts that either hits exactly in the interest area of the person you give it to or falls completely flat for people who don't have space or time to set up their own hobby gardens. Make sure to know who you're giving it to!

Assorted Additional Ideas

While we've worked in broad categories up to this point, there are a lot of potential gift ideas that don't fall neatly into those categories.

Let's talk about a few other options you could consider as sub-$50 eco-friendly corporate gifts.

• Apparel. We mentioned jackets, but there are also all sorts of other apparel items, like socks, t-shirts, long-sleeve shirts, and hats to choose from. Eco-friendly apparel production is some of the most widely-invested and available eco-friendly options for gifts, as well. Also, much like the Good.Store link up above, some stores add on additional charity, like your purchases helping to plant trees or protect the Arctic.
• Stationery. Pens, notepads, and other stationery items can also be eco-friendly. Bamboo pen shells, notebooks of recycled paper, and other eco-friendly options give you a bunch of potential choices. The only downside is that they're kind of boring as gifts, so limit them just to people who are likely to find them useful.
• Tech Items. While there's a certain amount of tech that can't be made more eco-friendly than it is (rare earth metals and semiconductor manufacturing are particularly challenging), other components like the cases and shells, the packaging, and the shipping can all be done more effectively.
• Bath and Body Items. Cosmetics and bath items are everywhere in the eco-friendly world, whether they're made with sustainable ingredients, manufactured with eco-friendly methods, or produced using only natural scents. The sky's the limit when it comes to these, and putting together a whole care package is entirely possible for under $50.

Another option to round things out is just taking the money and putting it somewhere more useful. The truth is, corporate gifting isn't always what people want, and if you can't think of anything that really suits your recipients, you can always ask them for a cause they care about and donate the money in their name to a charity they support.

Browse Our Store

If you're struggling to think of a gift and you want to get something for your whole employee roster or client list, why not check out our storefront? We've spent a lot of time building up a list of products that are sustainable, eco-friendly, union-made, or otherwise progressive in their creation. Not everything we offer is under the $50 (each) price point, but many of our options are, and you're sure to find something that meets your needs if you look.

Plus, if you have any questions or requests, especially about customizing your order, we're always around to help. We love this stuff, and we want you to love it, too, so we'll do our best to make sure it suits your needs as precisely as possible. Just drop us a line!