School, Lunches and Being Green

I pack three separate “meals” for M on a daily basis during the week.  She spends her breakfast at the neighbors, has snack time during a recess, and of course the lunch box.  So how do I stop the plastic baggie monster?  I am not willing to put in a bunch of money on containers for a seven-year old that has not proven herself responsible enough to bring home containers, with the exception of her lunch box containers.  What is a mom to do to help save the planet? 

First, the good.  Her lunchbox never has a plastic baggie.  She has three sandwich containers that get rotated out throughout the week.  She has two snack containers for carrots and crackers.  Of course the loveliness of bananas and apples is that they come in their own container.  Lunch containers ALWAYS make it back home.  This meal is a no brainer.

Breakfast.  Breakfast varies from week to week.  Zbars are my favorite of her choices.  Easy peasy.  Throw a pre-wrapped bar into her backpack.  Trash is thrown away, and we are not out a container.   Bagels with cream cheese and strawberries and breakfast sandwiches  fit nicely into a sandwich container.  This container inevitably has to be picked up that afternoon at the neighbor’s house.  Not the most convenient but at least we still have our containers.

This brings us to snack, the most difficult of our meals.  I buy a variety of snack foods in bulk at our local Spouts market:  sesame sticks, oriental mix, vegetable chips, banana chips, corn nuts, yogurt raisins and pretzels.  The initial purchase is pretty green.  I take my own bags every time.  The divvying out becomes not so green.  Snack baggies.  We easily could go through a package of 50 every 2 weeks.  I have sent her with containers.  They get left on the playground and are never seen again.  This is not very green either. 

I wanted something that she could shove in her pocket when she was done to ensure its safe return home.  Something that she could easily eat her snacks from.  Something that would seal, so nothing crumbled in the bottom of her backpack.   Something I could put apple slices in and would not leak juice onto everything.  I needed a baggie. 

Looking online I found pretty much what I wanted:  Reusable snack and sandwich bags.  I was, however, unwilling to pay 8 dollars a back for a snack bag which would, more likely than not, get left on the playground.  Hello tutorials and let’s see if I can make these puppies.  I did not want to get too extravagant until M proved herself reliable.  I found this baggie tutorial from Heidi over on Dabbled (dot) org.  Best of all they do not cost much and are easy to make.