When was the last time you had lunch with your child at school? Not only is it a great way to spend some extra time together, but it gives you an opportunity to actually witness the abundance of packing waste that is generated. What are the kids’ sandwiches wrapped in? (Plastic baggies or tin foil, right?) What about all those convenient, yet wasteful single-serve items like yogurt or pretzels? How about all those paper napkins? There is information galore about waste-reducing lunch-packing strategies. Educating yourself and your children on how to trim down trash is as important as providing a healthy lunch. Here are some sites that I feel offer some great zero-waste ideas:
• Waste Free Lunches provides an easy to read chart to reduce lunch-packing waste. If you want your school/work to head in the garbage-free direction, leading families to this website may give people the jumpstart they need!
• If your child cannot go without her Capri Sun or Honest Kids juice pouch, at least sign your school up to join the Terracycle brigade . It’s a win-win situation. You help Terracycle keep these pouches out of the landfill and the school makes money.
Laptop Lunches is the famous eco-friendly lunch kit that pops up everywhere on the Google search. Everyone praises their nifty fitting eco-containers. A Bento-box set 2.0 comprises of A Hard black outer shell containing 5 food containers, a set of utensils, and ”The Laptop Lunch User’s Guide.” It is not cheap–$24.99 for this eco-bento-box lunch kit. If you take into account all the money you’ll save on plastic baggies and juice boxes, it can be well worth it.
Wrap-n-mat is just what is says: a reusable place mat that doubles as a wrapper for your food. Sometimes even the small reusable containers may be too cumbersome in your child’s lunch bag. This money-saving, washable food wrapper is perfect for those mulit-snack lunches.
• For all you DIY-ers out there, I thought this was a clever idea from Family Fun: make your own cool, eco-friendly, reusable snack and sandwich containers from juice cartons and milk jugs!These waste reduction lunch concepts not only keep our landfills from overflowing, but educate children about the importance of environmental stewardship. Here at Earth Promise, we’d love to hear about any zero-trash ideas you partake in.
Post from www.Earthpromise.com