Do you or your kids take their lunch to school or work? If so than these simple steps will help save money and also benefit the environment.
This article is about creating lunch with no waste. That means less trash filling up our public waste baskets. The challenge is to create a lunch in which every item included can be eaten or reused. In other words the take out meal that you create must be a masterpiece of recycling. Your goal is to create a lunch that cannot be disposed of in any way.
First off, no more plastic or paper bags allowed to be taken to school or work! You can reuse this lunch pail or lunch sack. You can carry a reusable lunch pail all year. The same lunch pail can also be handed down from kid to kid so you do not have to buy any more plastic. A reusable ice pack can help keep their foods cold and fresh.
There are also two products on the market that are really useful for keeping the amount of plastic we put in landfills down. These are Snack Taxi and Wrap-N-Mat. These are reusable sandwich and snack bags. They are easy to use and really cheap. Just think how much money you would save if you would finally have the chance to stop buying plastic baggies. Zip Lock bags are really expensive!
You can also invest in reusable plastic water bottles…By refilling a child's reusable water bottle in their lunch; you can save $0.50 to $1.00 a day because you don't have to buy pouch drinks or water bottles! For me that means saving about thirty bucks a month per child. So I am saving $120 a month because I have four kids.
To store your child's lunch items during the day, you can buy bulk products to reduce your packaging and expenses. There is no need any more for the individually packaged items that create a large amount of waste and are usually much more expensive. I use plastic reusable containers whenever possible. I train my kids to make sure they bring the container complete with lid home.
Creating environmentally friendly lunches are easier than you think. Teach your children about why they are using the items that they have and explain how saving the environment by eliminating their trash is going to help the planet. Usually it becomes a conversation piece at the lunch table and other children become quite engaged in the topic. The more we educate the children, the more we have made a difference. This is all part of raising more conscientious individuals who are aware of the effect of all of their actions on the environment.