How green is your lunch? We aren't always as green as we would like to be, lunch-wise, in part because we just haven't found a way to efficiently pack a nutritious, environment-friendly lunch every day.
Tammy Pelstring and Amy Hemmert had the same problem, and solved it by creating Laptop Lunches, American-style bento boxes that are reusable, recyclable, and lead-free. The Laptop Lunch System, shown right, is $34.99, and includes a bento box with 5 food containers, utensils, an insulated carrying case, and a waterbottle. It also includes their book, The Laptop Lunch User's Guide, which is filled with tips and recipes for great lunchmaking!
If you struggle to break free from the sandwich-milk-apple rut, Lunch Lessons: The Way We Feed Our Children by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes is a great read. Not only does it provide nutrition information and menu/recipe suggestions, but this book also has some good suggestions for how to live a little greener.
The reversable hemp carriers are a greener way to carry your lunch in style. Reversable navy/avocado, but at $59.99, probably not too practical for the schoolyard set.
We first heard about Laptop Lunches when we were gifted with the Small Lunch Jar (below left). It holds 18 fluid ounces of liquid, but at only 6.5" tall, is small enough to throw in a bag. The Large Lunch Jar (below right) is a little taller, holds about 27 fluid ounces, and has a handy lid/bowl. Thermoses are $11.99 and $16.99, respectively.
Laptop Lunch products are great, but the biggest obstacle is, of course, that you still have to make the time in your busy day to pack lunches, and we suspect it is that time crunch that makes products like Lunchables so popular for kid's lunches, even though they are not that healthy and definitely not that green. But surfing through the Laptop Lunches Flickr Group, which documents what members are packing for lunch every day using the bento boxes, is inspiring us to make the time and effort to pack beautiful, healthy lunches for our own family.
We've had one of the Laptop Lunch boxes for a year now and have been so pleased. It's actually my husband's, who can be fairly hard on things; it's been tossed around, whacked against the car as he's trying to get in, shoved in his briefcase. It's held up well and inspires him to avoid the fast food runs that were becoming a significant part of our budget. Highly recommend.
view shelby's profile
Oh my goodness, I want one of those hemp bags for myself!!
view exxon23's profile
We have a laptop lunchbox for our toddler and he loves it. He's only at his babysitter's three days/week but will stomp over to the pantry and to ask for it ("luh-bah, luh-bah") even when he's home and eating with us. It almost always comes home empty, which his grandmothers find impressive given that he is only a year and a half old.
I find it no trouble to pack his lunch; it takes five minutes at most, and I do it in the morning while he's eating breakfast. We spend a little more time thinking about our shopping list, but we were going to the grocery store anyway.
We also use silicon cupcake liners to divide up the large boxes further; they're the perfect size for new foods he's not quite convinced are great yet, like last week's cucumber-feta salad.
view dot's profile
Im a bit wary of the Laptop Lunch System - maybe someone can validate their "green-ness", however they are listed on Healthytoys.org as having tested positive for some pretty nasty chemicals. http://www.healthytoys.org/product.details.php?getrecno=1317
To investigate this further, basically out of anger after paying $34.99 for it; I did email the company whose response was that healthytoys.org made a mistake & was removing it from their list; that was last yr and its still on there!
view goldberg117's profile