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Meet “The Low Impact” Lunch
Many of us pack lunches every day whether it is yours or your children’s. Probably you pack a sandwich in a plastic bag, chips, and juicy box or plastic water bottle in a lead laden lunch box. Maybe you will need some silverware to go with that salad or fruit cup you packed in your brown paper bag. When you or your children are done with your lunches, what is the next thing you do? That’s right; all those plastic bags, aluminum foil, silverware, paper bags, and wax paper, end up in the trashcan. Subsequently, all that waste ends up in landfills. A plastic bag takes 450 years to decompose.
So how do we provide “greener” lunches for us as well as our families? First step is reducing the lunchroom waste.
According to waste-freelunches.org
“Much of the trash we generate comes from the packaging on the food we buy, and lunch foods are no exception. In fact, it has been estimated that on average a school-age child using a disposable lunch generates 67 pounds of waste per school year. That equates to 18,760 pounds of lunch waste for just one average-size elementary school.”
Just ponder how much waste that is for your school or perhaps where you work. It is pretty staggering.
In addition, each school is faced every year with trying to pass its budget. At the same time the cost of waste removal has increased due to the increased gas prices. Wouldn’t it make sense to reduce lunchroom waste and thereby reduce the waste removal line item on our budgets? For that matter, reduce our impact on landfills?
To make matters worse, many of our lunchboxes have lead in them. Go the Center for Environmental Health to learn more about lead in our lunchboxes.
So how do we reduce our lunchroom waste? Leave it two moms to come up with a solution. Tammy Pelstring and Amy Hemmert, founders of Laptop Lunches, have created the Laptop Lunch Bento Box Set. This Laptop Lunch Box is lead-free, environmentally friendly, recyclable, and dishwasher safe. Best of all, it reduces the waste attributable to paper bag or regular lunch box lunches.
Each Laptop Lunch Bento Box Set comes with the following:
“A hard outer shell containing 5 food containers, a set of utensils, and The Laptop Lunch User’s Guide.
- Removable inner containers can accommodate a variety of food sizes
- Tray-like feel makes lunch fun.
- Sealable lid prevents wet foods from leaking onto other foods.
- Dip container for sauces, salad dressings, and dips makes eating vegetables fun.
- Single unit eliminates the mess of jumbled containers.
- Stainless steel fork and spoon with stylish plastic handles are great for leftovers.
- Convenient size fits in backpacks and most lunchboxes.
- Durable plastic containers (not lids) are microwave safe.
- Containers and lids are dishwasher safe–top rack only”
The Laptop Lunch System comes with a Lunch Bento Box Set along with an insulated carrying case and reusable water bottle. Team this lunch bag up with a nontoxic ice bag and you have a waste free lunch box that Al Gore would be proud of! This lunch box is ideal for school lunches.
What do people with larger appetites such as teenagers use? I actually asked this question a year ago because I looked at the bento lunch box and thought I would have to buy two for my teenager. As many of you may have experienced, they can have a bottomless pit when it comes to eating.
Amy suggested the Lunch Date that includes Laptop Lunch with a hemp bag in two different color choices (navy blue or designer color) to insert your lunch box in, a lunch jar, stainless steel drink container, bento sleeve to insert your nontoxic ice pack in, and guide to change the way you look at lunches.
Both lunch systems are good for college students and working people as well. These products can be bought through the website product page for US and Canadian orders, or through retailers located in the United States, Canada, UK, Sweden, Norway, and Demark.
So, now we have the perfect solution for lunchroom waste, what about help with making the lunches more nutritious?
Laptop Lunches’ website is full of wonderful lunch menus and helpful tips to make any lunch more nutritious along with a free newsletter with inspirational lunch ideas from other moms.
Always remember to pack lunches with organic fruits and vegetables. However, many people cannot afford organic food or it is not readily available. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has compiled a Shoppers’ Guide to help you as to which conventional vegetables and fruits are acceptable when organic is not an option. For example, there are some fruits that are low in pesticides such as bananas, pineapples, mangoes and kiwis.
A good nutritious lunch will help you through those seemingly long hours of afternoon work or school. As you head home with your Laptop lunch bag you will know that your lunch was not wasted.
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on October 28th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
That is a great picture and conveys the issue quite well. Personally I use a plastic containers, reuse a glass bottle for my milk and toss it all in my backpack.
on October 29th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Welcome Dawn! I accidently deleted your comment so disregard the “2 comments” after your name. Readers, Dawn writes a great blog about being frugal. (www.frugalforlife.com) Everyone could learn some ideas from Dawn’s blog!
I love your comment because it is so simplistic. No need to buy anything-just use what you have. If you have any suggestions for teenagers, I would love to hear them. Everyone at my children’s high school carries a brown bag with everything disposable. They have limited time to eat, backpacks full of books, and they don’t want to be different. All that trash is ending up in our landfills. As much as I love the backpack idea of Laptop Lunch Date, I am not sure if teenagers in high school will use it–especially boys. Any thoughts?
on October 29th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Ok, Lemme think like a teenage boy….
A lunch sack option might be a fabric one, but made out of suede or denim. If their backpacks are filled up to much, perhaps a more ‘adult’ lunch box like the long rounded, metal ones. I would think that with a reusable lunch box then they could through the plastic containers back in.
As for the peer pressure, all I can suggest is to try it out for a week and if they can go a week without getting ‘beat up’ about it, then it stays.
on October 29th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Hmm….you want a more adult version…put a place to hold a cell phone and Ipod, etc. That should chic it up a bit!
on April 20th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
[...] 6. Consider packing your lunch using Laptop Lunches which is made out of nontoxic materials and comes with utensils. No need to throw away plastic bags, or tin foil since they have nice little containers to reuse. Throwing out or using plastic utensils will be a thing of the past. They make a lunch box as well as the Lunch Date which is for heartier eaters. For more information, see my article, “Meet the Low Impact Lunch.” [...]