Greening Our Children’s Lunches

When I was in grade school, we had pretty basic lunches. A piece of fruit, some sliced veggies and a sandwich, wrapped in waxed paper. I was so excited when plastic came into play, since my sandwich would no longer fall apart or be stale by noon. Now, of course, plastic has been shown to pose many health risks by leaching into our bodies via our food. The same is occurring with aluminum. In my time, my reusable lunch box was cumbersome, so I eventually chose the standby of a paper bag. We reused the paper bags and held the sandwiches together with reused rubber bands. Any leftovers were returned home in the same bag. I do not remember using the trash. Cheese and apples were cut up to the amount we needed, and since the cookies were homemade, they were also put in sealed reusable bags. We drank water or milk. Oh, how things have changed in two generations.

Taking Out the Trash

According to the EPA, the typical American schoolchild generates 67 pounds of waste in discarded school lunch packaging each year. Waste audits made by examining unopened packaged foods, untouched fruit and juice boxes indicate the average student in the Durham District School Board in Ontario has similar stats, with the average elementary school child’s lunch generating 30kg of garbage per year (also about 67 pounds).

The Recycling Council of Ontario notes that for lunch alone each school produces approximately 8,500kg of waste per year. In the U.S., more than 18,000 pounds of garbage per school year is created from lunches.