Following the raging success of the 2018 non-goat ethical Christmas gift guide, here for you today – responsibly wrapped in reusable gift wrap – is the 2019 list of ethical, sustainable, socially conscious, or charitable gift ideas to satisfy all kinds of family members and budgets.

Budget Category: ‘Can we pay you in exposure?’

Cookies from The Cookie Project

Price: $13 – $32

Delicious baked goods are a staple of family Christmases, office Secret Santas, and ‘we totally remembered to buy you specifically a gift, let me just reach into this cupboard’ gifts all over the world. Here in Aotearoa, The Cookie Project employs people with disabilities to make delicious cookies using the finest local ingredients. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities hovers around the 80% mark – affecting both the mental and physical health of those excluded. The Cookie Project is a new social enterprise on a mission to change this stark statistic, and to bring more cookies into the world at the same time. It’s a win-win.

AvoSpa range by Cocavo

Price: $12 – $18

Were you inspired by the Spinoff article about how to make your own kawakawa balm but don’t quite have the time/resources/emotional energy to commit to that? Good news! Cocavo are a Northland company that specialise in high quality, sustainable avocado and coconut oil, and now they’ve released their AvoSpa range, which uses these same ingredients to create beautiful, natural skin balms. In addition to Kawakawa Balm, there’s Manuka Balm for skin repair, Breeze Balm for colds and flu, and a bunch of others. As someone who has skilfully passed on their hyper-sensitive skin to both their kids, I can attest these are great remedies for things like eczema. Even better, recognising the high incidence of skin conditions among people with Down syndrome, 10% of every AvoSpa purchase is donated to the UpsideDowns Education Trust.

New Zealand Firefighters Calendar

Price: $15

It’s an oldie but a goodie – the NZFSA annual calendar is now in its 30^th year, and in that time has raised over $800,000 for the Child Cancer Foundation, as well as funds and awareness for our brave firefighters. Everyone needs a calendar at this end of the year. Some of us also need fire safety tips, and some more of us have thirst reasons to pick one of these up. All the models are real live NZ firefighters and can be seen educating people about fire safety, working with cute kids, and yeah, there’s some sexy poses in there too. You can buy them online or at your local fire station.

Ethique products

Price: $5 – $30

A good beauty product is a safe bet for pretty much any family member. Just don’t do what my sister did and buy deodorant for our brother every year for a decade. Eventually, they will see what you’re getting at and get pissed off with you. Ethique are a Christchurch-based company that are committed to plastic-free, cruelty-free, sustainable beauty products. Their products are available online as well as in an increasing number of shops in New Zealand and overseas.

Budget Category: ‘I prefer craft beer’

Annual Passes

Various prices

This one is mostly for any small people you want to buy gifts for, though there are plenty of adults who would also love carte blanche for as much time looking at those cute little smiley stingray faces at the aquarium as they can get. If you’re looking to avoid buying plastic toys for kids this year, then annual passes are a great way to go. There are options all over the country from the Turbo Pass at Invercargill’s Transport World in the deep south, to Kelly Tarlton’s, MOTAT, the Zoo, or Stardome in Auckland. Our cities are teeming with possibilities, and smaller towns have local pools, museums, homesteads, and other kid-friendly amenities. Extra for experts – attach a homemade voucher for a day out with you – that way you don’t have to get anything for the small person’s owners.

Spinoff Book

Price: $38

Need I say more?

Ooooby box

Price: $40 – $90

Chances are, someone you’re buying a Christmas present for consumes food. Excellent. This one is for them. Ooooby boxes deliver high quality, local produce which show-cases small-scale, sustainable farming. They have a range of options (including a massive Christmas dinner box) and are customisable if you, like me, believe that mushrooms are a scourge upon this earth which should never be approached, let alone eaten.

Clothing from Liminal

Price: $25 – $100

Liminal stock organic, ethically made clothing from a handful of different social enterprises such as Freeset which works with women who have survived sex trafficking in West Bengal. You can buy some of their basics range, decorative totes, or if that’s too pedestrian for your Christmas, customise a T-shirt with a haiku in honour of Robert the Bruce or something. They scored an A+ in the 2019 Ethical Fashion Report, alongside Icebreaker and Kowtow.

Budget Category: Ok, Boomer

Artwork from Opportunity Arts

Price: $200 – $1,000

Opportunity Arts features artists with disabilities, backgrounds in corrections, or others who traditionally struggle with access to the arts. There is an array of beautiful pieces available on their website which will “make you feel, feelings!”

An e-bike from MeloYelo

Price: $1,800 – $4,000

Increasingly affordable and reliable, e-bikes are a sustainable solution to soul-sucking city commutes and paucity of parking spaces. MeloYelo are a New Zealand owned and operated team, whose profits support EVelocity, their charity which develops the engineering skills of young people. If a whole e-bike is just a tad spendy, they also sell gear like helmets and phone holders. The e-bike revolution is upon us, so make like our suffragette mothers and emancipate yourself through cycling.

Jewellery

Price: potentially quite a lot

There are plenty of local jewellers across Aotearoa who create beautiful, bespoke, conflict-free, sustainably sourced or upcycled jewellery. For example, there’s Sophie Divett in Christchurch, Ash Hilton, Stone Arrow in Takaka, and, if you think you might use the festive season as an excuse to pop the big question (and thus never have to remember your engagement anniversary), there’s the wonderful brother and sister team at Diamonds on Richmond in Auckland, who are also partnered with Cure Kids.

Lime brought e-scooters to Auckland and changed the way we travel in less than a year. Now, the council is replacing it and Wave with three new contenders. Josie Adams goes to the Lime warehouse to say goodbye to the original scooters.

In a warehouse in Eden Terrace, almost a thousand Limes hibernate. More than 99% of Auckland’s Lime population has been brought in to sleep. A few stragglers linger, trapped behind private gates or imprisoned in concrete basements.

The Auckland Lime team were given four days to bring in these scooters, leaving the public with only Flamingo to tide them over until Beam, Neuron, and Jump take to the streets. Only a few hundred Flamingos are currently available. The removal of Lime and Wave scooters has decreased the city’s total e-scooter population to a fraction of what it was in the space of a week. “Nice stacking technique,” I said, pointing at the columns of Limes arranged like a Tron maze in the middle of the room. I’m told it’s a world-first stacking technique. They can fit 200 inside 13 square metres.

It’s hard to believe it’s been just over a year since the lean green scooting machines first turned up on city corners, leaning jauntily to the side and trilling loudly when jostled. In that year, both e-scooter brands and the public have been on a steep learning curve.

Over the past 13 months, Aucklanders have gone from seeing e-scooters as a novelty or a nuisance, to embracing them as part of the transport ecosystem. We lime – now a verb – to work, to the bus, and to the beach.

Auckland Council knows e-scooters have changed the way we travel. It knows that the scooters aren’t just popular, they’re also good for the city: they’re part of the solution to car congestion in the CBD, they work for the city’s carbon neutral targets, and they facilitate the use of public transport.

Lime estimates that one in four of its scooter rides replaces a car journey, but the effect goes further than that; e-scooters enable users to get to public transport without a car, meaning for the average commuter using a Lime could save them a much longer car ride than the app shows.

Despite everything it’s pioneered, Lime hasn’t had its licence renewed by Auckland Council. The question everyone’s asking – including the company itself – is why?

It’s not because the scooters are less safe: the council told The Spinoff the machines themselves are fine, and stack up compared to the other brands.

It’s not because of injuries: although there were Lime accidents, ACC doesn’t differentiate between brands of e-scooter injury in the claims it processes. Lime accidents were reported more mostly because, for a long time, it was the only brand operating in Auckland.

It’s not because the company is foreign-owned: three of the issued licences are going to brands owned in the US and Singapore.

It’s not because there were too many scooters: up to now, 1875 were licensed to operate. With the four new licenses, there will be 3200 scooters across the city.

Council spokesperson Craig Hobbs was reluctant to explain the difference between the approved applications and two that weren’t approved due to it being unfair on competing brands. However, the news that Lime and Wave were withdrawing from the city focused around mitigation of “nuisance”.

“The biggest criticisms we’ve had have been scooters lying around on footpaths,” said Hobbs. “It’s a trip hazard, and it’s certainly a concern for the disabled community.” The application process for e-scooter licences in this round asked for this to be addressed.

“We asked, do they understand when they have an issue with a device, and how quickly can they get there to sort it out? How do they influence user behaviour so people aren’t riding [and parking] dangerously?”

Influencing user behaviour is at the top of every e-scooter brand’s to-do list. Much of Lime’s publicity has come from its First Ride scooter safety events, and its scooters automatically slow down when entering high traffic areas. Despite their best efforts, consumer behaviour is never totally predictable.

A man in Christchurch allegedly stole 50 scooters for undisclosed purposes, and a teenager in the same city threw one off a cliff. A Wellington man threw a Flamingo across a busy street this week, yelling about it being a hazard and making it more of one with his actions.

As of yesterday at lunchtime, the Lime warehouse was missing half a dozen of its scooters. The team were working late at night and early in the morning to ring alarms and get thieves to boot the scooters out – but some people just can’t bear to let go.

This is because although a few consumers sure are weird, most of them loved what Lime introduced them to. “I’m really going to miss you,” said one user via the Lime app’s feedback page. “As someone with a disability, Lime has allowed me to explore parts of the city I never could before. Thanks for the good times.”

Others gave feedback detailing how they took Limes to the train, to their interviews, and up the road to the shops. Of course, they can still do this when Neuron, Beam, and Jump turn up – but we’ve got a few scooter-sparse weeks ahead of us. 

Although the four brands had their licences issued on December 2, none are yet present on Auckland streets. It’s expected they’ll turn up toward the end of the month, leaving many Aucklanders with a traditional, petrol-fuelled journey to Christmas events.

Lime lives on in Hamilton, Dunedin, and Christchurch. It hopes to come back to Auckland in six months’ time with its new and improved scooters, which The Spinoff can confirm have great suspension and braking.

In the meantime, a thousand scooters will stay hibernating in a warehouse, waiting for the spring of council approval to break.

“I was sad today when I opened a new account with the others,” an anonymous user told Lime. “You broke the ice into an amazing new market. I loved riding your scooters. I hope you’re able to press on somewhere you are more welcomed and not be bullied anymore. Cheers x.”