Laptop Lunches

Do you usually buy a lunch or do you bring you own to work or school? I try to bring my own lunch as much as possible, but it’s hard when I am running all around the city all day having no refrigeration or storage to put my lunch. We know that bringing our own lunches is a healthier option for our stomachs and our wallets, but is the way that you are packing your lunch a healthier option for the environment?

Here are some lunch waste facts that I found in an article:

• ALUMINUM FOIL: More than 20 million Hershey’s kisses are wrapped with 133 square miles of foil every day
• ALUMINUM + TIN CANS: In the time it takes you to read this line, 50,000+ 12-oz. aluminum cans were made
• JUICE BOXES: Most inorganic trash retains its weight, volume, and form for at least four decades
• PAPER BAGS AND NAPKINS: It is estimated that 17 trees are cut down for every ton of non-recycled paper
• PLASTIC BOTTLES, FORKS, WRAP: U.S. citizens discard 2-1/2 million plastic bottles EVERY HOUR
• STYROFOAM: U.S. citizens throw away 25 billion styrofoam cups every year

Product packaging as well as the packaging you use to wrap up your lunches, snacks, or dinners all end up in our environment somehow. We need to make sure that we use sustainable and environmentally friendly packaging techniques that reduce the amount of garbage and even recycling that needs to be processed.

Buy in bulk anything that you can keep in glass jars at home. Also, purchase any produce fresh and from markets as opposed to buying them bagged, canned, or wrapped in packaging.

Bring your own silverware from home to use. That way you won’t be scrounging around looking for plastic utensils at work.

Use thermoses/kleen kanteens/sigg bottles to bring liquids in. They come in all different sizes, shapes, and colours now so you’ll be sure to find one that fits your personality and lifestyle. Using plastic water bottles or throw away cartons only adds to the problem.

Use reusable cases or containers to carry your food. Products like laptop lunches are amazing for storing, separating, and keeping your food fresh throughout the day. The best thing is that you bring it home, wash it, and use it tomorrow without any waste created.

I think that the Laptop Lunch system is perfect and actually just learned about it the other week. I checked their website and it says that most Chapters/Indigos carry them. I’ll be picking one up very soon and posting my own pictures of my own laptop lunch. At the end of the day, this post was made to inform you mainly about packaging and how something used everyday by so many people gets used without a thought of how environmentally un-friendly it is. We are thinking about healthier eating more so these days, but lets think about healthier packaging too.

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