Greener Back-To-School Lunches

Waste-Free Lunches estimates that the average child with a take-to-school lunch creates a whopping 67 pounds of waste per school year (that’s about 19,000 lbs of waste per each average elementary school). School lunches are full of waste. Some typical culprits…

• Paper or plastic lunch bags and containers.
• Snack packs of cookies, crackers, pudding cups, fruit cups, jello cups, and raisins.
• Juice boxes, juice bottles, bottled water, or worse hard to recycle squeeze novelty drinks.
• Plastic baggies, foil, and plastic wrap for all sorts of foods.
• Lunchables or other building lunch kits.
• Paper napkins and plastic silverware.

This year green it up with some better options…

Instead of paper lunch sacks or plastic lunch boxes full of chemicals choose a reusable lunch container made with safe materials. My two favorite kid lunch kits are the all inclusive Bento Systems 2.0 Laptop Lunch Kit shown above. and the Waste Free Lunch Kit (shown below) – these are cool because they come with everything you need.

However, you can also simply get a bag then fill it with other eco-friendly options. Other nice earth-friendly options include:

• Mimi the Sardine organic cotton lunch sacks
• Fleurville Lunch Pak
• Crocodile Creek Lunch Boxes

Other gear:

• Instead of plastic yogurt tubes get some Lekue Silicone Ice Molds which are actually used to make ice pops, BUT they seal tight, so you can pour organic yogurt into them and send them off to school.
  
• Instead of juice boxes get a reusable bottle. My son has a Kleen Kanteen Classic and a New Wave Stainless Steel Bottle – he likes both and neither leak.
• Instead of plastic baggies use reusable snack pack options – at my house we’ve tried and liked… Small Sidekick Containers, Fresh Snack Pack – Reusable Sandwich Bags, and Plum Creek Mercantile Reusable Cloth Snack Bags but there are many other types of reusable food storage available. Just make sure you choose food storage products made with eco-friendly and non-toxic materials.
• Instead of paper napkins use cloth.
• Instead of plastic silverware use real silverware.

Bonus post link – Ten Green Back-To-School Supplies