Waste Free Lunch

Did you know that a child taking a disposable lunch to school creates an average of 67 pounds of lunch waste annually?


This alone should make you want to make lunches as waste free as possible. If not then maybe these next figures will convince you.


http://www.globalstewards.org/lunch.htm
ALUMINUM FOIL More than 20 million Hershey's kisses are wrapped with 133 square miles of foil every day
ALUMINUM AND TIN CANS In the time it takes you to read this sentence, more than 50,000 12-oz. aluminum cans were made
BANANA AND ORANGE PEELS Food debris in a landfill decompose only 25% in the first 15 years (try composting or vermiculture!)
JUICE BOXES Most inorganic trash retains its weight, volume, and form for at least four decades
PAPER BAGS AND NAPKINS It is estimated that 17 trees are cut down for every ton of non-recycled paper
PLASTIC BOTTLES, FORKS, WRAP U.S. citizens discard 2-1/2 million plastic bottles EVERY HOUR
STYROFOAM U.S. citizens throw away 25 billion styrofoam cups EVERY YEAR


Now for some tips to help you accomplish this feat:


START WITH A REUSABLE LUNCHBOX, BACKPACK, OR BRIEF CASE—Avoid disposable plastic and paper bags.
PACK YOUR FOOD IN REUSABLE CONTAINERS Avoid plastic bags, plastic wrap, aluminum foil, and prepackaged foods whenever possible.
INCLUDE A DRINK IN A REFILLABLE BOTTLE—Avoid single-use juice boxes, drink bottles, cans, and pouches whenever you can.
ADD REUSABLE UTENSILS—Eliminate disposable utensils.
USE A CLOTH NAPKIN—Eliminate paper napkins (we have eliminated these from our entire house over the past several months)


Here are two websites that offer plenty of other advice, tips, hints and ideas.


http://www.wastefreelunches.org/ and www.laptoplunches.com


If you want more ideas, Google bento boxes and/or laptop lunches and I bet you will be surprised with all the ideas for lunches as well as the variety of containers available to make packing a waste free lunch possible.


Now I want to share mine and my daughter's personal favorite. We found this on Amazon.com and I am going to have her name embroidered on it. Isn't it great?