To think "fuck off Eco lunch box"?

[VivaLeBeaver]

I mean the standard lunch box food police is bad enough. Not allowed xyz in pack up.

But for the next two weeks we have to have no packaging waste in the lunch box either. So nothing in individual wrappers, sandwich bags, etc. Ater the two weeks experiment is up apparently it's fine to using as many cheap plastic bags, bits of cling film as you can cram in the box.

Do the school really thing I'm going to bung sandwiches, cucumber, pepper strips, satay and illegal cake in one Tupperware box with no method of wrapping them?

Dd came home today with no empty sandwich bags which is unusual. Apparently the kids with rubbish at the end of lunch have to put their rubbish in a big bag so at the end of the trial they can see how much they're damaging the world.

Sod the soup, it's time for kippers.

Unwrapped, room temperature kippers.

And some camembert.

I love soup, camembert and especially kippers tether

Ds2 is 9, he came home with a 'keen to be green' project this week. he has to do one of the following

1. watch the news and write about recent environmental issues.
2. write a letter of complaint about littering\ dog mess
3. resurch endangered animals and produce a fact file
4. make a junk monster out of recycled material 5)find out where rainforests are and present your findings
5. learn to play the womble song or another song about the environment 7)creat a short dance as an endangered animal

How old is your child? Maybe alot of schools are taking part by doing different things

How does this work with packaging that's already being re-used?

We save bags from bread, pasta etc & veg, & keep in a drawer to wrap sandwiches.

Everything else is in diddy plastic boxes - pound shop, or Sainsbury's basics. They last a good few months.

My policy with schools is to ignore any dictats ideas which I think are bloody stupid. It's none of their business how you send your child's food into school. Sometimes schools need a gentle reminder letter sent in telling them to get a grip and mind their own business and get on with the business of teaching

Your school's food police would froth at the mouth at what goes on at my kid's school.

When one of the local kids has a birthday on a school day the parents send a McDonalds Happy Meal in to class for each child. No-one is asked for permission, they just do it.

these sandwich wrappers are rather lovely and reusable.

Oh look, more teacher bashing.

I'll just point out, for the sake of balance, that these things tend to come from government policy, and schools have to show they are doing something to encourage healthy eating, responsible attitudes towards the environment and all the rest of it.
There may even be some educational basis for it.
Schools aren't solely trying to make parents' lives more difficult.
There is more to education than spelling and maths.
Teachers eat sandwiches too.
Teachers are parents too. (I do love this bonkers 'us and them' mentality. So helpful.)

I've not read the whole thread, but really don't understand your problem. I think it's a very interesting experiment for your DC to take part in and both she and you may learn something from it. We do waste too much and we do not need so much packaging. Now could someone tell that to the supermarkets.

We use e.g. Old takeaway or margarine tubs for lunch. My DCs normally have school dinners so only have the odd packed lunch, it's not worth buying actual tupperware.
One problem I usually encounter is that on school trips they want to chuck all the packaging away rather than bring it back, so all my tubs end up getting binned.

I think it's an interesting experiment for kids to take part in if parents don't change what they do. Kids get to learn about different materials and the externalized costs of some choices. That's science, maths and economics right there. They could add in politics and art easily enough and probably geography and history too. Modern languages might be a stretch. :)

What shouldn't happen is pressuring parents to change what they have been doing up to now. That's not the point of schools, if the government want to change the habits of the population they should darn well target the whole country not pick on parents with kids at impressionable age. Can you imagine the uproar if the government insisted al businesses check their staffs lunch boxes for packaging? Or illegal chocolate? It's not OK to treat people like this just because they are kids in school.

I don't undrstand you.
you wrap something and then put it in the lunchbox?
I don't wrap anything, just put the sandwich in a sandwich size plastic box. same for the illegal cake. the yoghurt doesn't need wrapping, nor does the spoon or juice.

Genuinely interested to know the result of ignoring this nonsense? DD starts school in September and my natural response to this stuff is to consider it and see. If it's not practical, I'd ignore but I don't know the consequence of doing that.

They'll be doing Waste Week.

www.jointhepod.org/campaigns/waste-week/

It's part of the Eco Schools programme. This encourages the children to get involved and try to do small things to make their school more "green". The point of the eco lunchbox is so that they can compare the amount of waste they usually have, with how much they can save.

The "eco warriors" will be a group of children who have been organising this with the help of the school. And no, it's not going to change the world. So we might as well not bother, eh?

I use a divided lunch box thing like this

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lock-and-Lock-Rectangular-36l-Divided-Food-Container-/370202266792?_trksid=p3284.m263&_trkparms=algo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%26itu%3DMRU-11700%252BUCI%252BIA%252BUA%252BFICS%252BUFI%26otn%3D21%26pmod%3D220415930355%26ps%3D54

Other ideas here:
www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=divided+lunch+box&tag=googhydr-21&index=aps&hvadid=12292184508&hvpos=1t2&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=3151328701956609283&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&ref=pd_sl_3ztdnk00ae_b

Fill the box, put in lunchbag, add drink if you wish, fit top on and put in lunch bag lunch done. I do sometimes wrap a biscuit as they can go soggy if left in the same container as sandwiches and fruit etc but ds rarely has one (maybe one a month).

Also I am struggling somewhat with yoghurt but I sometimes fill a mini tupperware container with yoghurt from a big pot at home (cheaper than small ones) and add that to the bag as there is room in ds's after the lunch box and drink goes in.

I, like bella, want to know the consequence of ignoring things like this.

They wouldn't make children go without lunch I assume

Get a lock & lock divided box. Then you just have to waste time, materials, energy & water cleaning it daily (with hot water + soap), no?

tbh, I am a slacker, as DS1 has unwrapped sarnies, & I don't wash his lunchbox hardly ever daily, which I'm sure the MN hygiene police would screech about. Can't win!

I reuse bags from other things, sarnies can go into bread bags, for instance (don't like making my own bread, either). Can't see how that's un-eco.

I think YABU. It's a school, it's their mission to trial/learn/research. And it's not that hard. Just get a divided lunchbox.

Soup. It's going to be cold this week, send them in with a lunchbox full of lovely hot soup.

Maybe float a few grapes on top.

And make sure you remember to spell/grammar check all of this week's school letters, and return them.

:)

the re-useable sandwich wrap mats that akissisnotacontract mentioned are good. My stepdad has used one for ages.

Cut an old takeaway box into strips & fashion it it into dividers like in a sock drawer? This will be a bugger to wash though.

I use thin plastic sandwich bags, but I re-use them the next day inside out, & again if I can shake the crumbs off, and finally as a disposable glove for things like scraping out dripping & chucking it in the bin, so I would be cross if school chucked them away after one day to make a point.

But I wouldn't mention it as that would mark DD out as being the child of a wierdo.

f your DC are about to be starting secondary school, the investing in a load of small boxes now is a good idea, as once they start FT and have to bring in 15 g of butter ad 50g of flour and half an egg and other random stuff in very small quantities you'll need a million small boxes and tubs.

Have to say I find the whole thing a bit like a Prius.

You have this efficient car. And that great. But it takes no account of how it was made in the process. And how un-ecofriendly it is.

I hope they are teaching about how much energy it takes to make all the tupperware everyone is having to buy for this demonstration. And how much energy and resources it takes to reuse them in comparison to disposable ones (which can also be reused).

I hope they are teaching about how when you eat a chicken loads of bits are wasted because people don't like to eat them in this country. I hope they are trying to get the kids to eat chicken's feet. Or a good bit of Hugh Furry campaigning about all the fish thrown back because they are the wrong fish.

Or how so much food is shipped from X country all year round, goes through a distribution centre, then is shipped to various supermarkets when its grown seasonally down the road and you should be buying at certain times and not others.

And how processed food in their boxes is worse than non processed food.

Not forgetting of course how these children should all be walked to school rather than taking the car for a week to prove how much they are damaging the environment. And to piss off and inconvenience their parents off even more.

Definitely a step to far. Definitely something I would end up bitching at home to the kids about and how what they were being taught was bollocks and neglecting massive things which were far worse in the process of all this.

There must be a market for 2" deep round plastic boxes (about the size of a small dinner plate) divided into quarters.