Subscribe by Email5 Tips for Packing an Eco-Friendly Kids’ Lunch
If your family is like ours, not a day seems to go by that you aren’t packing a lunch for some member or all of your tribe. We pack lunches (and snacks) to take to school, daycare, work, on road trips, to the beach, for hiking, on ski days… you get the idea.
When you pack this many lunches, you realize how many juice boxes, sandwich bags, and individual wrappers this can add up to. Multiply this times the number of hungry kids in your house, times the number of kids in their class, in their school, and so on and its no wonder that something as simple as packing a lunch can have a huge environmental impact. In fact, the average American child produces 67 pounds of trash each year from school lunches alone!
To help make your “brown-bagging” as a family a bit more eco-friendly, we have put together a list of five tips that can make a big difference in cutting back on lunch box waste.
1. Reusable Containers, Fewer Baggies
Begin creating a collection of small plastic containers that have resealing lids that can be used over and over to hold everything from crackers and cookies, to rolls of lunch meat or cut up fruit and sandwiches. Things like empty yogurt containers or baby food containers work well and fit easily into a lunch box/bag, cooler or backpack. You can also purchase inexpensive food storage containers in all sizes at the supermarket (even little snack sizes). By reusing containers you will save hundreds of plastic lunch and snack baggies that would otherwise be thrown away.
2. Make Your Own “Snack Packs”
The supermarket is loaded with time-saving, individually wrapped, portion-controlled, lunch items that may seem like a good idea, but often create more waste than value. By purchasing lunch items in larger quantities (and no, we’re not suggesting you need to buy 40 lbs of Goldfish Crackers, just normal packaging quantities will do) and then filling smaller containers yourself, you will save on one of the biggest waste producers in kids lunches - excess packaging.
3. Juice Boxes are NOT Our Friends
Get each one of your kids (and adults for that matter) in your family a reusable drink bottle that you can fill each day with their favorite bev. With so many great eco-friendly, high-quality, and BPA-free kids bottles on the market today, there are lots of options to use instead of non-recyclable drink boxes.
4. Way Cool Lunch Box Dude
Make your kids lunch easy to transport and appeal to their own sense of style with a lunch box or bag that is also eco-friendly. By investing is a quality lunch box or bag, it will last longer and keep your kids lunch fresher. Look for boxes and bags that are made with recycled materials (like recycled plastics or cloth), are lead-free, use minimal vinyl, and can be insulated with a cold pack when necessary.
5. Are you Going to Eat That?
Many parents don’t consider the environmental impact of throwing food away when a child doesn’t eat what has been packed for lunch. When food goes uneaten, it becomes a waste of the resources and energy required to grow, harvest, transport, and produce that snack item they decide they don’t want (or can’t trade to their friends). Try to keep your child’s lunch as appealing as possible by letting them help choose what to bring (within parameters of course), and keeping food the right temperature so it tastes good at lunch time.
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