Rubbish from luchboxes!!!!

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AIBU to expect the council/school to provide bins for my children to through away their lunch box rubbish???
The council has sent an email to all schools in our area telling the heads that children who have sandwiches for school have to bring all their rubbish home with them in their lunch boxes. This is doing my head in as I have 3 children (youngest is only 4) bringing home disgusting, dirty yoghurt/apple juice spilt lunch boxes!
It's winter now and the luch boxes are yuck by the time the hot weather comes they will be rank by the time they get home!
AIBU to think that a bin isn't a luxury item more of an everyday essential item????

Good point KnowNothing, hadn't thought of the children who have school dinners, their parents don't have a clue how much they eat! I know my eldest had school dinners a couple of months ago and it was a different choice to what it should of been and he ended up with mashed potato!!!!
To be honest I'm not worried about how much they eat, I know if they are hungry they will eat it and I know that they have a cooked meal every night. Although I know that isn't the case for alot of people so the school has to keep that in mind.
I wonder do the teachers have to bring their lunch time rubbish home? I doubt it!

Diddl do you really think that schools have fridges big anough for eveyone's packed lunch to go in??
I put a freezer thing in my kids lunch boxes to help keep stuff cool.

All my children like yoghurt and eat yoghurt. I don't find them expensive and they are an everyday thing for them to have. They have the small sized ones enough for a lunch time therefore not wasteful in my view.

"Diddl do you really think that schools have fridges big anough for eveyone's packed lunch to go in??"s.

Well, depending on school size it´s not impossible that there could be one in classrooms.

Was just wondering about keeping stuff cool as people are saying about stuff being "rank".

Sistema bottles don't leak. You can get them at Amazon or Lakeland.

Here the children bring their rubbish home. A couple of lessons on NOT putting half eaten tuna sandwiches back in the lunchbox to rattle around with a banana skin and a half empty yogurt pot were needed.

Now we're all about Frubes and little cliplid pots.... And no tuna.

I buy Frubes when they are on offer, bung them in the freezer, and DD3 takes a frozen one each day, helps keep the rest of the lunch box cool. It helps too if you get insulated lunch bags rather than the plastic boxes for keepign stuff cool. Boxes work best as they clean better (fewer seams and corners for crumbs/unidentified sticcky bits to get lost in.

If you're getting too much rubbish coming home, then perhaps your'e sending too much food in? DD3 (normal appetite levels) has a sandwich (one slice of bread), a Frube, a piece of home made cake and some fruit. And water in a fruitshoot small bottle. Very little mess, as everything is eaten.

My DC's school do this too - it is to support the Eco - club and be a rubbish free school. It is horrible though if you forget to clean their bag out.

At my older DD's primary they didn't do this and a lot of children used to just throw their lunch out (and not eat) as the faster you ate the quicker you got out to play. At least you can tell if they have ate and find out why not (for e.g. my son's music lesson often overruns into lunch).

I don't understand why councils will charge schools for bins so they produce less waste, when the schools' remedy is to send the waste home, where it gets put in the bin, and will be collected by exactly the same council!

Surely they can put a food waste bin at the canteen exit. If all kids are seen to do this it might end up in more recycling than if they hand something smelly and manky to a harassed parent. Let alone the parents who don't recycle anyway!

As has been pointed out, the parents of kids who have school dinners don't see their plates anyway. You can see if your DCs are hungry. As for a bit of swapping, if your DCs are eating a balanced diet at home, I wouldn't stress. Appreciate it might be a bit different if your DC is allergic, though.

I have 5 children and am more than capable of knowing how much food they need/eat, thanks!
It's the mess of left over food such as odd bits of fruit, skins, cores and juice/yoghurt mess that is my problem. Also I just think it's a bin, the normal thing you do with rubbish is put it in the bin!!!! What will the next money saving thing be - all children will have to bring their own toilet roll in to save money!!!????

Haggis01, just seen your post. Rubbish free school? What do they think happens to the rubbish when it gets home!

Exactly what I think Rebeccaruby, well said!

Re the rank lunchboxes, I use a little ice pack which stays cool for a few hours, it's usually defrosted by lunchtime, but then there are still another 3 sunny hours for the opened remains to get warm. Soft warm Cheddar is particularly repulsive.

Euphemia, yes I do wash the bananas, so here's a for you too. But common sense suggests to me not bringing home half a yoghurt in the first place.

You say that its ok for them to send home uneaten food but bin the rubbish, but that requires someone to inspect each lunchbox as it is emptied and make a call about what should come home! Where one person would send every scrap of uneaten food, another might let them bin a load of crusts, which imo is half the sandwich! And the time it would take to inspect an entire lunchtimes worth of boxes would be ridiculous.

It is far easier to have them bring everything home, both from the schools pov and the pov of the parent of a picky eating child. You cant have it both ways!

And I say all this as someone who is also sick of scraping out manky crusts stuck to the lid with yoghurt!

Put a plastic sandwich bag in teh box and tell the children to put everything in there before they finish lunch.

TBH it is not that bad a thing why shouldn't you have back your own rubbish?

"yogurt that is releasable,"

Sorry, had to laugh-had visions of a yogurt refusing to come out of it´s pot!

I honestly think this is no biggie.

You'll be saying next that the midday staff should wash your yoghurt spoon and wipe out the lunchboxes.

My children don't need ''training'' to put their rubbish in my bin thank you. They do that as soon as they come home from school. The same way that they scrape their dinner plates into the bin and then put them into the dishwasher.
My point is, in my opinion they should be provided with a bin when they sit down to lunch as I think that's a basic thing to have in a place where they eat. The same thing keeps being said about parents who want to see what their children are eating but as somebody earlier said ''what about the children that have school dinners?''
If you were to go out for a picnic would you empty your rubbish including any half eaten food into a bin or carry it home with you?

What a fuss over nothing.
Use plastic box and re-useable bottle.
Train your DC to:

• put their rubbish in the plastic box
• empty their own lunchboxes and drink bottles when they get home.