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August 15th, 2011

Back To School, Waste-Free Lunch Kits For Kids

It’s back to school time! With families trying to save money by brown bagging their lunches to work and school, there’s a lot of waste – and money – going right into the trash. According to the EPA, each child who brings a brown bag lunch to school every day generates about 67 pounds of waste by the end of the school year. Creating a waste-free lunch kit is smart and is one of the easiest ways to significantly reduce your consumption of use-and-toss items. Reuseit.com has put together a video outlining the top 5 steps to making a waste-free lunch kit that I thought some of you would find handy as your kids head back to school.

If you want to replace disposables with long-lasting, safe reusables that help save the environment and save you money, these are the five things you’ll need to get started:

Reusable lunch bags – replace the brown paper bag with a reusable/washable bag, like the ones you are already using when grocery shopping!
Food containers – Wastefreelunches.org estimates that eliminating disposable packaging and single-serving items can save families $250 a year while also reducing waste!
Snack and sandwich bags – Save money and resources with reusable bags and wraps instead of single-use plastic ones.
Utensils and more – Bring your own set of utensils to work or school every day instead of using and tossing the plastic ones provided.
Reusable bottles – As much as 40% of the bottled water sold in the U.S. is just filtered tap water, and tap water costs about $0.002 per gallon compared to the $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon charge for bottled water.

If you are still looking for more tips, check out Building a Waste-Free Lunch Kit to send your kid, your spouse, or yourself off to work or school with less waste and more money in your pocket!

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