Tag: reduce trash

Welcome to YouChoose, a blog where we explore ways of living sustainably. This week I’ll talk about a few ideas to make our lunch box more sustainable.

If you go to work or have school age kids you probably choose between purchasing your lunch every day or bringing it from home. The first option is certainly more convenient, but it can be expensive in the long run. Long time ago, before the pandemic, I used to go to the office and took my lunch box with me. Because we are vegetarian, and sometime school cafeterias don’t offer great vegetarian choices, I also pack a school lunch box for my daughter.

As I was trying to minimize our environmental footprint I was concerned about the amount of trash produced by lunch packaging. If we think about it, a traditional school lunch box can leave a considerable trail of daily trash behind:

• A zip lock bag for sandwich that is trashed every day.
• A bag of chips.
• A plastic bottle.
• A single size milk or juice carton.
• A paper napkin.
• A plastic fork.
• A second zip lock bag for fruit.

These are all items that on average are considered single use. Multiply all this by 180 days and you’ll see that just one kid can produce a large amount of plastic pollution in one school year. This is true for adults as well. I thought it was necessary to teach my daughter the importance of not producing trash, therefore I tried to train her to bring back everything that was in the lunch box so that it could be washed and re-used. It started when she was in elementary school and at the beginning it required some time to get used to it, but it has worked very well. I am proud of her because she has been now producing zero lunch waste for many years. Here are some ideas on how to pack a zero-waste lunch box.

• Sandwiches can be packed in zip lock bags or in sandwich wraps. They both are washable and reusable. I wash both by hand with dish soap. The wraps last for years and the zip lock bags can be washed and used until they last, certainly more than once.

• Provide one reusable water bottle to fill up at school. The bottle can be brought back home where is rinsed every day. For water there are also water fountains. Juices or milk can be carried in small reusable bottles that are washed at home.

• Now that my daughter is in high school I often pack dinner leftovers for lunch. A reusable, microwave safe food container and a metal fork or spoon can be brought back and placed in the dishwasher. Even plastic forks can be washed and reused multiple times.

• Chips, fruit and vegetables can be packed in zip lock bags or other reusable pouches. They can all be rinsed and reused multiple times.

To reduce even more the use of plastic I lately have been thinking of making my own food pouches from fabric scraps that I have at home. I’ll post later about my progress (or lack of) on this topic.