Waste free lunches

Suggestions for a small carbon footprint at work or at school for lunches.

Quite a few years ago now, I helped my children's school have a “green” lunch day at school to celebrate earth day. A note was sent home with ideas for ditching pre packaged foods and plastic wrap but the most important thing we did was get the children involved. They went around the week before, after lunch, to see how the bins were overflowing with tetra drink boxes, straws and wrappers and this really made an impression on everyone.

So it is important at home to get the kid's involved, in both what they will be eating and what a waste free lunch achieves. After all sending healthy food that just gets thrown away does not improve your carbon footprint.

• Use your left over food in lunches: Some suggestions are savoury muffins, quiche, rice salad, pasta salads and potato salads and wraps.
• Apples, oranges, bananas and grapes are healthy and waste free as they come in their own compostable containers.
• If your children love dried fruit, for example buy larger boxes with less packaging or consider buying in bulk or buying at the farmer's market.
• Water, of course, is the best drink.
• The 3-compartment Bento Lunch Boxes are BPA-Free. Pictured above, they are great for putting a variety of foods as long as they are dry as all bento boxes are not leakproof.
• A Thermos is leakproof and insulates both hot and cold food or beverages and can be used for pasta or rice dishes or warm potatoes. 
• Sustainable lunch container options help you save money and natural resources, while keeping throw away bags and food containers out of our landfills:              

          - Tie up a cloth napkin to hold snacks like grapes.                                                  

          - Use reusable containers with attached lids making loss of lids impossible.     

          - Lunch boxes with different compartments are a good way to reduce wrapping.

          - Reusable drink containers reduce waste but need to be when labelled with

            child's name.

          - Sew a Reusable Snack Bag

          - Sew Lunchbox Cloth Napkins for Waste-Free Packed Lunches