FSB Author Article
Save Cash and Trash: Packing Healthier
Waste-Free Lunches
By Adria Vasil,
Author of Ecoholic: Your Guide to the
Most
Environmentally Friendly Information, Products & Services
Now,
what if instead of reaching for pre-packaged munchies, parents
everywhere bought snackables in bulk and placed them in their own
reusable containers? By god, we'd have a lunchtime revolution! In fact,
if every student packed a zero-waste
lunch,
we'd save 1.2 billion pounds from landfill a year. You'll also be
saving some serious coin (since individually wrapped foods tend to cost
more) and coincidentally cutting out many of the not-so-healthy heavily
processed ingredients that often come with pre-packaged snacks.
So how do you lighten your lunch load?
- Say goodbye to disposable plastic baggies. Get reusable
sandwich-size sacks like Lunch Skins (3greenmoms.com).
They're perfect for, yes, sandwiches, as well as chopped up veggies
like carrots, peppers and celery.
- Buy yogurt, dried fruit, snackables like pumpkin seeds or even organic cookies in bulk, then pack them in reusable food containers (just not the kind made of clear, shatterproof polycarbonate plastic since those contain hormone disrupting bisphenol A -- the same stuff that made headlines in clear plastic baby bottles).
- Pass on pricey,
packaging-heavy drinking boxes and buy juice in large cartons/jugs.
Pour a single portion into a polycarbonate-free drink canister like
Thermos' Foogo (keeping in mind that a stainless steel container of tap
or home-filtered water is way healthier than a shot of sugary,
nutritionally dead boxed OJ).
- Pour last night's soups and even stews in an insulated thermos
for a homemade meal on the go.
- Don't forget to toss a cloth napkin and, if necessary, washable
cutlery into your lunch box.
Keep the lead out of lunchtime
Speaking of lunch
boxes, stay away from anything made of vinyl, aka PVC. Back in 2005,
California's Center for Environmental Health filed a lawsuit against
some big-name makers of soft PVC lunch cases
(including Toys"R"Us, Warner Brothers, DC Comics and Time Warner) after
testing revealed that their products contained high levels of lead.
Better to go for all-natural cloth or even nylon.You'll find a bunch of
alternatives online at sites like www.reusablebags.com
(think funky organic and recycled cloth bags, stainless steel
containers and compartmentalized bento-box-style Laptop Lunch kits).
Once you've got the knack of trash-free lunches, why not spread the message throughout your child's school? Consider forming a zero-waste lunch committee. If you've got a keen teacher on your side, you might even get students to kick things off with a garbage audit (think garbology 101). That means measuring how much trash goes in bins before and after lunch hour. The mini researchers can put on rubber gloves and note what kind of disposables are taking up the most room.
Raise cash for trash
Whatever you
do, don't let any disposables that you and other parents might still
use end up in landfill. Talk to your kid's school about saving them up
and sending them packin' to be made into purses and pencil cases! Once
you've collected a bunch of branded drink pouches, candy/cookie/energy
bar wrappers, chip bags and yogurt cups, ship them off to TerraCycle
and the upcycling company will give you 2¢ to 5¢ per package
for your
trouble (terracycle.net).
Call it a cash-for-trash fundraiser and you'll be garbage-free in no
time!
©2009 Adria
Vasil, author of Ecoholic:
Your Guide to the
Most
Environmentally Friendly Information, Products & Services
Author Bio
Adria Vasil, author of Ecoholic: Your Guide to the
Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products & Services,
is a best-selling author and journalist for Canada's NOW, where
she has been writing the "Ecoholic" column for
five years. She lives in Toronto.
For more information please visit www.ecoholicnation.com