waste-free lunch

April is Earth Month and the perfect time to discuss packing healthy, litterless lunches for children. If you have a child in school and you pack his lunches daily you can follow some simple steps to make it litterless.

I don’t pack full lunches for my preschooler because he eats lunch at home but I do pack his snacks. I often ensure he has a good balance of organic fruits, vegetables, yogurt, and cheese weekly in his snack bag.

Excited to support the waste-free lunch initiative my son and I came up with some simple solutions to go litterless. I thought I was already doing a pretty good job but we learned that we could be doing so much more!

Waste-Free Lunch:

  • Packing a waste-free lunch starts with swapping out disposable bags, plastic wrap, foil, pouches and cans with eco-friendly reusable containers.
  • Paper napkins and wipes can be replaced with cloth napkins. We now use Funkins, adorable double sided, reusable cloth napkins made out of 100% cotton. My son loves the fun designs and he uses them as placemats as well. We love them!
  • Use reusable cutlery instead of plastic cutlery.
  • Buy stainless steel or reusable water bottles instead of single-use cans or juice boxes.
  • Send healthy snacks and swap things like a homemade trail-mix instead of pre-packaged packs and fresh cut fruit and veggies instead of packaged fruit sauces.

funkins

Below are some photos of my son’s snack bag and what I usually pack for him. For us the first easy step towards a litterless lunch was to stop using paper napkins. Using Funkins we have been able to reduce a lot of waste!

waste-free lunch bag

waste-free lunch bag

Second I started looking at the little single-use yogurt containers and pre-packaged cheese packs we usually get.  I buy those all the time for convenience but I realized that I could also just purchase a large carton of yogurt and  serve small portions for him in reusable containers. I also started cutting regular cheese and packing it into small containers instead of using the pre-packaged cheese.

waste-free lunch bag

I love that now we are making our contribution to the waste-free lunch program and it was so easy! We don’t need to send extra waste to the landfill unnecessarily anymore.

Do you have a waste-free lunch program at your child’s school?

I am taking part in the Funkins blog campaign. While I have received compensation as part of my affiliation with this program, the opinions shared are my own.