This green tip of the week simply involves packing a waste-free lunch for your kids or for your day at work.  Did you know that the average American school-age child throws away 67 pounds of packaging a year?  This includes plastic water bottles, sandwich baggies, and juice boxes.  With the population of kids in the US alone accounting for over 70 million, that’s over 4.6 TRILLION pounds of packaging.

Here’s some other lunch waste facts courtesy of globalstewards.org:

Plastic Bottles:  U.S. citizens discard 2.5 million plastic bottles EVERY HOUR

Aluminum Foil:  More than 20 million Hershey’s kisses are wrapped with 133 square miles of foil every day

Aluminum and Tin Cans:  In the time it takes you to read this sentence, more than 50,000 12-oz. aluminum cans were made

Juice Boxes:  Most inorganic trash retains its weight, volume, and form for at least four decades

Paper Bags and Napkins:  It is estimated that 17 trees are cut down for every ton of non-recycled paper

Styrofoam:  U.S. citizens throw away 25 billion Styrofoam cups EVERY YEAR

It’s time to cut down on lunchtime environmental impact and pack waste-free lunches.  Here’s the uncomplicated part, it’s as easy as these 5 steps:

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