How to Pack a Zero Waste Lunch

Bringing lunch with you to school or work is a great way to eat better and save money.  While there are many benefits to packing your own lunch there is one major environmental concern: single use disposable packaging generates significant amounts of waste.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) just ran a great short piece on how to green up your child's school lunch.  CAP estimates each average school-age child who has mostly single serving packaged items in their lunch generates 67 pounds of waste each school year. CAP suggests packaging a zero-waste lunch.

Here’s the basic things to remember:

1) Reuse your beverage container. Use a thermos or a reusable water bottle to carry liquids.

2) Pack a reusable lunch bag. Using the same lunch bag every day creates no waste and is an affordable one-time purchase. You can probably even reuse a bag you already have.

3) Buy in bulk. Buy family-sized packages of cookies, crackers, and chips, rather than individually packaged snacks, and then pack the desired amount each day.

4) Use reusable containers for food. Use Tupperware, or whenever possible wash out old food packaging for reuse. This is great for transporting leftovers.

5) Rise out of old food containers. Reuse old food packaging to avoid throwing it out.

6) Bring your fork from home. Remembering to pack reusable utensils will prevent wasting hundreds of plastic forks, knives, and spoons every year. You can also keep a set of washable cloth napkins on hand to prevent unnecessary use of paper ones.

It’s almost always easier, and cheaper, to replace disposable packaging items with reusable materials. And they’ll save you less trips to the store in the long run, as well as money on things such as plastic and paper bags.

via Center for American Progress

Comments

[Robor]

Thanks for article. Everytime like to read you. Robor

[Susanna Mendiola]

Thanks for the post on a reusable lunch!

[Bitter Scribe]

Be careful about advising school kids to bring cutlery from home. A lot of schools view those as weapons and will suspend or even expel students who bring them to school. I've even heard of kids who got in trouble for bringing PLASTIC forks or knives to school. It sounds crazy, but that's "zero tolerance" for you.

[Mike Moyer]

Thanks fort he info. I've heard about the cutlery-as-weapons problem, but I haven't seen a formal policy or rule. If anyone knows of one I'd like to research it.

I'm going to link to this post from the NiceBox.org blog.

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[Brian Marconi]

Great information, I will certainly be buying the super reuseable famous tuperware!

Rubbish Clearance

[jean.trap@yahoo.co.uk]

I was actually surfing the net and luckily found your link. I am a bit interested on the article post you have here. I think we are on the same side. Everyday, I'm packing lunch before going to work and everything that I do is in detailed on your article.

Good job. Keep on posting more tips and possible discussions.

Regards,

Jean