Our 2019 Christmas Gift Guide: The ethical & sustainable edition

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be compiling a host of gift guides to help you with your Christmas shopping.

Here are 12 gift ideas for ethical and sustainable gift-giving this year. Find even more suggestions by browsing the collections below.


The Whole Fish Cookbook by Josh Niland

Sydney’s groundbreaking seafood chef (and founder of Australia’s first sustainable fishmonger) Josh Niland reveals a completely new way to think about fish cookery in this comprehensive cookbook. He invites readers to see fish for what it really is - an amazing, complex source of protein that should be treated with exactly the same nose-to-tail reverence as meat. Featuring more than 60 recipes for dozens of fish species, The Whole Fish Cookbook emphasises using the whole fish and wasting nothing.


Walks in Nature: Australia by Anna Carlile

Celebrate the Australian outdoors, from coastal cliffs and crescents of sand, to iconic bush landscapes and wild offshore islands. Walks in Nature: Australia offers more than 100 walking trails around the country, all within an easy distance of Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane or Hobart. There’s a variety of walks from 6-20km to suit every season and fitness level, with detailed track notes, easy-to-use maps and even delicious suggested foodie stops.


The Glad Shout by Alice Robinson

The winner of this year’s Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction is a harrowing but beautiful examination of motherhood, survival, and love. In the very near and very imaginable future, a cataclysmic storm has sent floodwaters through Melbourne, and we meet Isobel, Shaun, and their toddler Matilda, as they seek refuge in a stadium where help and security are promised. The Glad Shout raises urgent questions about how we will experience the near future of our climate crisis.


Salt: Selected Stories and Essays by Bruce Pascoe

A far-ranging collection of stories and essays by the award-winning author of Dark Emu, Salt: Selected Stories and Essays showcases Bruce Pascoe’s enduring fascination with Australia’s landscape, culture, land management and history. Powerful, funny and devastating, this is essential reading for people wanting to grapple with colonialism and dispossession, the Australian national psyche and our huge, complex and devastating history.


We Are Here by Meg Mundell

Edited by former Big Issue deputy editor Meg Mundell, We Are Here is a vibrant and moving collection of true stories showcasing the creative talents of people who have known homelessness. From cold city doorways to lonely bush camps, from a borrowed couch to a discreetly parked car, from dodgy boarding houses to the humid hell of Manus Island, these powerful, defiant and illuminating stories will make every reader question their place in the world, and the kind of place they want the world to be.


Don’t Be Evil: The Case Against Big Tech by Rana Foroohar

Financial Times global business columnist Rana Foroohar documents how Big Tech lost its soul - and became the new Wall Street. With skilled reportage and unparalleled access, Foroohar exposes anti-competitive behaviour, the hijacking of our personal data and mental space and how companies offshore their exorbitant profits. What’s more, she reveals how these threats to our democracies, our livelihoods and our minds are all intertwined. Yet Foroohar also lays out a plan for how we can resist, creating a framework that fosters innovation while also protecting us from the dark side of digital technology.


Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper

Megan Phelps-Roper was raised in the Westboro Baptist Church - the fire-and-brimstone religious sect at once aggressively homophobic and anti-Semitic, notorious for its picketing the funerals of American soldiers. In November 2012, at the age of twenty-six, Phelps-Roper left the church, her family, and her life behind. Unfollow is a story about the rarest thing of all: a person changing their mind. It is a fascinating insight into a closed world of extreme belief, a biography of a complex family, and a hope-inspiring memoir of a young woman finding the courage to find compassion for others, as well as herself.


The Edible Garden by Paul West

Paul West, of River Cottage Australia fame, is passionate about food and community. In this highly instructive guide he shows you how easy it is to grow and cook some of your own food, no matter how much space you have. Running the gamut of practical garden advice, to wonderful family recipes and fun food activities and occasions, The Edible Garden is a celebration of real food and vibrant community. It will inspire you to grow, cook and eat with those you love - and find real meaning along the way.


Waters of the World by Sarah Dry

Take an illuminating tour through 150 years of the history of a significant but underappreciated idea: that the Earth has a global climate system made up of interconnected parts, constantly changing on all scales of both time and space. A prerequisite for the discovery of global warming and climate change, this idea was forged by scientists studying water in its myriad forms. Sarah Dry follows the remarkable scientists who toiled on his or her own corner of the planetary puzzle.


Reusable Beeswax Food Wraps

These beeswax wraps are made from 100% organic materials and have natural, antibacterial properties to maximise the life and flavour of your food. They are flexible, versatile, completely biodegradable and perfect for wrapping food and covering bowls.


2040

Award-winning director Damon Gameau embarks on a journey to explore what the future would look like by the year 2040 if we simply embraced the best solutions already available to us to improve our planet and shifted them into the mainstream. Structured as a visual letter to his 4-year-old daughter, Damon blends traditional documentary footage with dramatised sequences and high-end visual effects to create a vision board for his daughter and our planet.


Slow Travel by Penny Watson

This is a beautifully designed and practical compendium of places, activities, tours and experiences that will inspire you to get on the road in your own time and on your own terms. This book explores slow travel as a physical or philosophical endeavour, taking readers off the beaten track and through nature, and unveils journeys that will nurture talent and ignite the inner-self.


Still stumped? We also sell gift vouchers which can be used in-store and online.