As published in the Lafayette Today newspaper.
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Have you ever dropped into the school lunch room to see what “lunch” means at your child’s school? You’ll see trash cans packed with uneaten food, baggies, food packaging, foil, paper napkins, juice boxes, empty water bottles, straws, and more. Home-packed lunches are typically loaded with these “use and toss” items, which are admittedly convenient, but there is an enormous environmental cost that we don’t see. In fact, it has been estimated that a child taking a disposable lunch to school generates an average of 67 pounds of trash per school year - - that's 18,760 pounds of lunch waste for an average-sized elementary school! (source: EPA)!
If every student in Lafayette adopted a waste-free lunch (including finishing all of their food), we could divert over 300,000 pounds of trash from our landfills each year and collectively save over $1 million dollars per year. A waste-free lunch costs an average of $2.65 per day, versus $4.02 per day for a disposable one. That adds up to a savings of about $246 per student, per year. (side-by-side comparison at www.wastefreelunches.org).
If you’re ready to go “waste-free”, following are some basic tips to get your started:
Do pack:
- Reusable fabric lunch bags or lunch containers – An easy winner over a wrinkled, folded brown bag!
- Reusable water bottle or thermos for drinks – Lots of kids sizes with cool designs.
- Sandwiches in reusable wraps, bags or containers – Many new options!
- Snacks purchased in bulk and packed in reusable containers or bags - Purchasing lunch foods in larger containers and bulk instead of single-serve packages costs less. Resealable containers make it easy for children to save uneaten food for an after-school snack.
- Whole fruits without packaging
- Cloth napkins
- Reusable straws (stainless steel, etc.)
- Stainless steel or bamboo reusable utensils - Provide your child with utensils that will make lunch feel like a “real” meal!
Try not to pack:
- Paper lunch bags
- Plastic baggies and plastic wrap that are not reusable - Each year the U.S. consumes over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps (EPA). All that plastic that we use (and rarely reuse) takes a tremendous amount of energy and water to produce and isn't recyclable.
- Aluminum foil
- Individually-wrapped snacks, meals or desserts - almost 1/3 of the waste generated in the U.S. is from packaging
- Juice boxes - close to 2.7 billion juice boxes end up in the landfills every year
- Single-use water bottles - It is widely suspected that single-use water bottles may leach chemicals into the water and most are never recycled.
- Disposable forks and spoons - in the U.S. we throw away enough paper & plastic cups, forks and spoons to circle the earth 300 times (source: ecoagents.org)
- Disposable straws
- Paper napkins
For more information on how to pack waste-free lunches or start a waste-free lunch program at your school, visit one of these web sites: http://www.wastefreelunches.org/ - lots of helpful information http://www.reusablebags.com/ - a large online selection http://www.laptoplunches.com/ - a very popular waste-free lunch system http://www.onesmallstep.com/ - an online store for waste-free lunch supplies started by an East Bay mom.
Diablo Foods carries many useful products for making waste-free lunches, including the ECOLunchbox Kit developed by a mom in Lafayette (http://www.ecolunchboxes.com/)
Read success stories about how others in Lafayette are reducing their waste and living more sustainably at www.sustainablelafayette.net. If you’d like to help reduce waste at your school, please send an email to greenschools@sustainablelafayette.net.
link to PDF of Lafayette Today that
included article on page 16