How to give carbon neutral employee gifts with Giftagram and UPS

Unless you’ve been living in a (perfectly-packaged) gift box for the last decade, it’s clear: sustainability matters as much to your employees as it does to your long-term bottom line. Sustainability has become an important part of everyday living and is growing rapidly with the way users think about household products, packaging, and the gifts they send.

Luckily, acknowledging employees through corporate gifting programs can be an environmentally friendly act, especially when you work with a gifting platform such as Giftagram that has sustainability built into their DNA.

So, what does it mean to be carbon neutral? And how can you ensure your corporate recognition programs give back to your employees and support the planet they live on?

Read on to learn more about carbon neutrality, and to get our top tips for sustainable staff appreciation.

What is carbon neutral?

When we think about sustainable approaches, the ‘three Rs’ often come to mind: reduce, reuse, recycle. But carbon neutrality is a bit different—it’s less about avoiding environmental impacts and more about recognizing and balancing them. Some common words you’ll hear to describe this concept are: offset, defer, and mitigate.

Being carbon neutral means acknowledging that some of the standards we all rely on—deliveries by gas-fueled trucks and vans, for instance—come at an environmental cost.

The future may be electric, but our present isn’t, and a carbon-neutral approach balances each environmental cost, like fossil fuel use, against an equal benefit, like planting new forests.

Giftagram wants sending a gift to be easy for you and thoughtful for our planet. When you send presents with us now, you’re minimizing negative future environmental consequences, for gifts that truly keep giving for generations and years to come.

What does UPS’ carbon neutral delivery program look like?

Giftagram cares about climate change, which is why we use UPS carbon neutral shipments for all our deliveries.

Through its carbon-neutral delivery program, UPS has committed to planting 50 million trees around the world by 2030, invested 1 billion dollars towards research in alternative fuels and advanced technology, introduced e-bikes in the UK, and electrified its Chinese fleet.

To keep themselves accountable and avoid greenwashing, UPS’ carbon neutral program is verified by the Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS), the world’s leading testing and inspection company, and certified by The CarbonNeutral Company.

Why does carbon neutral gifting matter?

From a big-picture perspective, we all share this planet, and rely on it for survival, but you don’t have to be an environmental visionary to understand that giving green gifts makes good business sense.

A study by the National Environmental Education Foundation found that nearly 90% of employees engaged in their company’s sustainability work say it enhances job satisfaction and positive feelings about their employer.

Reports found in Forbes found that employee recognition programs have a major impact on their satisfaction, with over 80% of respondents saying gifts have improved relationships with employees, and 41% saying they improved employee retention.

When you choose a sustainable employee gifting program, you get the best of both worlds.

Giftagram helps you achieve your goals for employee retention and workplace wellness. With a wide range of sustainable products, packaging and delivery methods available, we’re with you every step of the way.

Here are 4 ways your company can go carbon neutral for employee recognition:

1. Choose employee rewards partners who share your environmental values

We use UPS carbon-neutral shipping in all our deliveries because we care about our planet and want to ensure that our work here doesn’t harm it.

Choosing partners like Giftagram and UPS not only increases the environmental good you’re already doing, it also contributes to a broader culture of corporate sustainability. When you let your partners know you’re choosing them for their environmental values, you’re encouraging all companies to fight climate change and champion a zero-waste approach, together.

2. Opt for everyday luxuries

In some countries, like South Korea, it’s common for house guests to come bearing gift packs of toilet paper, orange juice, or even Spam. Host gifts like this aren’t standard in Western countries, but maybe they should be. After all, they’re useful, and because they’re useful, they get used.

Strike the balance between practical, luxurious and green with our wide selection of gifts that give back like socks from Province of Canada that plant a tree with every purchase, eco-friendly house cleaning products, self-care bundles and refillable cleaning products with zero waste packaging, and sustainable, healthy snacks.

Giftagram also has reusable bags that can be personalised or branded, and natural cork yoga mats that make great additions to self care packages. The options are endless and if you don’t see what you like, our team can help you select the perfect gift. We promise they’re allancier than a box of toilet paper—but just as practical.

The Eco Set from Public Goods includes a Reusable Cotton Produce Bag, Reusable Mesh Produce Bag, Reusable Cotton Tote, Wide Mesh Tote, Walnut Scouring Pad, Ayate Washcloth, Scrubber Sponge, Sea Sponge, Wool Dryer Balls, Ayate Bathstrip, and Reusable Food Storage Wraps.

3. Let them pick

Still unsure of the best way to go green with your onboarding, recognition or holiday corporate gifting?

Remember: the most wasteful gifts are the ones that don’t get used. Giftagram’s commitment to high-quality products mitigates that risk by only offering the good stuff. But every person is different and one person’s beloved succulent is another’s living dust collector.

Giftagram's recipient gift selection function gives your employees the option to select the gifts they want, so you know they’ll be enjoyed.

4. Go with sustainable packaging

At Giftagram, we work with your team on creating custom packaging for your gifting program. Giftagram’s standard shipping boxes are 100% recyclable, eco-friendly cardboard boxes. What does eco-friendly packaging mean? The packaging that your gift is sent in optimizes the use of recycled source materials and manufactured using clean production technologies and best practices. Expand the Giftagram boxes by being repurposed for storage or regifting, or if you need to make space, it can be easily recycled.

Employee recognition and client gifting have always been important, but they drive even more value in the digital, work-from-home era, offering meaningful ways to build relationships and increase brand recognition from afar. Going green with your gifting only adds to that value, creating positive feelings for gift givers and gift receivers alike. And best of all, it recognizes your very best partner—our shared home and ecosystem, Earth—too.

Experience the Giftagram Difference

Giftagram makes it easy to show appreciation through memorable unboxing experiences. Their full-service corporate gifting platform allows users to effortlessly send gifts, manage delivery progress, and track spending. Choose from thousands of premium and best in-class gifts, hand picked by their curation team. Click here to learn about plans and pricing.