For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Married to a wonderful woman Anita who does more for others than she would ever do for herself. It’s a great quality in a person and she is often looking to do the right thing. For whom at times is at question but for the most part her actions are purely genuine.
So this time she said, “look at all the plastic bags we use. We must go through hundreds of bags a week on our kids snacks for school a month”. She was right. We have two boys 8 and 6 and we have to pack them snacks and lunch if they don’t want to buy lunch at school. Thankfully they both decided they would buy lunch every day and this so far has lasted about two months. I say thankfully because those of you readers who have to do this, know that packing lunch for your kids everyday can get a little monotonous at times. And costly. I’m not sure if there is a cost savings with the kids buying lunch. But I can tell you when you don’t have to do it every day, it’s worth it. For snacks, we would take a quarts size plastic bag with their name on it and fill it with a drink which would be a milk box or another drink box or water. Then we would have two little snack size baggies with a fruit and a salty snack like pretzels or Pirates booty. So for each snack you would have three bags. And for our youngest son Jacob, 4 of the 5 days he would have 2 of these snack bags. You do the math. That’s a lot of bags.
So Anita says, “ we need to do something different with the kids snacks”. So different we did. We started out small because well, it’s better that way for the kids. We said to Jonah, our oldest son, “If we pack you a spoon, can you remember to bring it home so we can clean it and use it again?” He said sure. Now he’ll say sure to many things and then 5 minutes later have no idea what he said sure to. But he agreed and that was good enough for us. So the next day we packed him a fruit cup and said “don’t forget to bring home the spoon ok?”. He said OK and off he went. Now before all of you who are so green that you are practically Forest Green you’re so green that you will say, “why would you pack one of those disposable fruit cups in with a metal spoon if you’re trying to be green?” To you people, I say back off. He’s 8 and we are new to this so baby steps people, baby steps.
Later that day, Jonah comes home with his spoon. It was a successful test. It was then that we thought we could move this thing over. So we had their lunch boxes (not really boxes but reusable sacks I guess you can call them) that were just sitting there. Those were to be our new snack bags. We even had another smaller reusable bag so that when Jacob needs two, he can have two. We then got those smaller reusable plastic containers for the snacks and they each picked out an aluminum bottle to refill every day.
And you know what? It worked. The kids didn’t think anything of it. They went to school, and came home with the stuff we sent them with. It’s so great. They love it and we have less waste.
I have even bought an aluminum water bottle that I keep with me. When I travel for work I always buy a bottle of water for the flight after I clear security. I buy one because you only get a cup of beverage when you fly and you get it when they choose to give it to you. Then you have a little table to keep it on for when are done. The water bottle has a top and therefore you can put it anywhere and it won’t spill. So now I carry my own bottle through security and find the nearest water fountain and fill it up. It’s so simple I’m embarrassed I haven’t done this sooner.
So I ask you my readers, all three of you, look around at your lives and see how something simple like getting an aluminum water bottle or a reusable snack bag can make a huge difference.
Ok, I’ll get off my soap box now and write more about food.
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