With the new school year underway many of us are packing lunches with a long list of criteria: the contents need to be tasty, nutritious and easily portable. Want to up the ante? Try going completely trashless.
The post-consumer waste from a small child's lunch can amount to a big old heap of trash. Juice boxes, snack sized packaging and sandwich bags accumulate fast and furious, but with a few reusable containers it's possible to eliminate lunchtime garbage entirely. Choose personalized items, DIY with a permanent marker or slap on some durable labels to assure that everything makes it home. Here are a few items that will work hard all year long.
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Also check out SnackTaxi - it's a fabric bag with a waterproof lining. You use it like a sandwich bag. They come in really cute prints and you can wash them!
http://www.snacktaxi.com/
My favorites are Wrap-n-Mat! I also really love Lunchskins. I like the Lunchskis best for a snack pouch, and Wrap-N-Mats best for sandwiches.
We are using the GoodByn, and compostable birch utensils, and a compostable paper straw. Bella [Kindergarten] is loving it. I also stitched up some days-of-the-week cloth napkins. Nothing hits the trash, so we haven't had anything "lost" yet. And as the "silverware" wear, we compost them.
We use velcro-closure cloth sacks for snack time, and those two are working brilliantly.
I use reusable lunch bags, containers and cloth napkins. Yay.
We eat lunch at the park most days and make a point of generating no waste. Boobs for the baby and reusable containers for the toddler. Cloth wipes and napkins for everyone. It just hard.
Meant to post: it isn't that hard.
I like the Easy Lunch Box (you can find them here: http://www.easylunchboxes.com/) It's large enough for your lunch and a snack plus it's microwaveable!
Planetbox! www.planetbox.com
Stainless steel, so no icky plastics to worry about. It's all one piece, so there are no lids to lose. It's easy to open/close so your little one won't accidentally dump it out trying to get it open and it won't leak in there backpack after lunch because it didn't get closed all the way. LOVE IT!
The packaging is not the hard part for me. (We love Lunchbots!) Keeping the food from going to waste with a picky toddler is the challenge.
My kiddo is embarking on year 3 of using the same bento-style lunchbox from Laptop Lunches:
http://www.laptoplunches.com/
We just pack real food, not pre-packaged: sandwiches, dried fruit, cheese cubes, pita and hummous. It's pretty easy, actually.
I pack my toddler's lunch and snacks for daycare every day, and we've never had a problem keeping it "no trash". Sippy cups and tupperware travel to and from school in her little insulated lunch bag from REI. Like TammyE said, we just pack regular food for her, nothing prepackaged. No big deal.
I am using a lunchbots container
http://www.amazon.com/LunchBots-Duo-Stainless-Steel-Container/dp/B001OIX5H2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1284047899&sr=8-3
I had a laptop lunch bento box, but the quality of the plastic isn't awesome, especially if it's for a young and rough kid... so this is PERFECT!