Did you know that the average school-age child in Canada and the United States produces over 66lbs of garbage at lunch time each year? In a school that has 400 students, that’s over 26,000 lbs of garbage in one school year. Translate that to all the schools in a school district, in a province or state, and then country-wide: it’s an appalling amount of waste going straight into our landfills.
We’ve got 5 easy tips to have a litterless lunch:
- Model the behaviour you wish to see in your kids. If you are constantly tossing a Starbucks cup into the garbage, your kids notice, and it’s unlikely they’ll make the commitment to reduce their waste. Walk the talk and bring a reusable travel mug when you’ve got the craving for your next cappuccino. Look at your own lunch and snack practices to see where you can reduce the garbage.
- Get the whole gang involved. Young children like helping in the kitchen, so encourage them to help with the planning, preparation and packing. Even if it does take longer to make the lunches, in the long run, the kids will be much more self sufficient at meal time. And plus, when they are invested in the process, they tend to actually eat the meal. If your kids are slightly older, try having them plan and pack everyone’s lunch at least one day per week.
- Avoid buying single-serving juice boxes, snack sacks, water bottles and containers. Instead buy a large tub of yogurt, juice or bulk granola bars and snacks and put portions into lunch/snack size reusable containers. It is a bit more time consuming (and you’ll probably lose the odd container or two), but the effort is worth it. Even if the single-serving containers are recyclable, most still end up in the landfill, or it takes significant energy consumption to actually recycle them. Single serving containers may be convenient, but they cost significantly more and often end up in the landfill.
- It’s difficult to completely eliminate snack packaging, but if necessary, keep the packaging at home, where you can control how it is disposed of and send the food to school in a reusable container. Yes, some wraps do go straight into the garbage, but there are some innovative recycling companies out there, which handle all the different plastics, foil wraps and more.
- Many cities have implemented kitchen (or green) waste curb side pickup. If your local school doesn’t have food waste pickup, ensure your kid brings the “leftovers” home for composting or proper disposal.
With the right supplies, some planning and a commitment to producing less waste in our landfills, it’s easy to make the change to go litterless at lunch time.