Cost of taking action: £/$/€ NIL
Take the Rotary World Savers school lunch box challenge
Our kids are learning about the environment, and they don’t want school lunch boxes to contain as much single use plastic as they do, so why not take this opportunity to take our challenge and do something a little differently.
Here’s what to do
- Day 1 of the challenge, pack your kid’s lunch box as normal. Before you hand it to them or put it in their bag, count the number of pieces of single use plastic that are in there. So, this could be the crisp packet, the Penguin bar wrapper, the cling film around a sandwich, a yoghurt pot, and sweet wrapper. We know from experience that, unless you are already fighting plastic pollution, there are likely to be at least 6 pieces.
- Day 2 of the challenge, pack your kids lunch box and make sure there are only half as many pieces of single use plastic used (oh … and unpacking an item before you put it in the lunch box doesn’t count LOL). So, for example, instead of wrapping the sandwich in cling film, put it inside a smaller box in the big one, or wrap it using greaseproof (baking) paper (which keeps a sandwich nicer anyway!). Instead of a pre-wrapped chocolate bar, why not put in a couple of home baked biscuits, again wrapped in greaseproof paper. Instead of a plastic spoon, how about a wooden one, or a piece of your metal cutlery – trusting your child to bring it home! Kids love hard boiled eggs and bananas – they both have the ultimate natural packaging already built in.
- Day 3 – 5 of the challenge, repeat this process, using up some plastic-wrapped items each time that you might have already bought, but never increasing your plastic count. So if on one day you reduce your count from (say) 4 to 3, then 3 is your new maximum.
- In the meantime, as your shopping day comes round, think about and then buy items for the lunchbox that are not wrapped in plastic. This can include boxed cake, fruit, baked items and so on. also, consider what else you could make or bake at home.
- Day 6 of the challenge … pack a lunchbox involving no plastic at all … Yay! now we are talking!
Why do this?
Plastic pollution is a massive and growing problem, huge amounts of it – millions of tons made up of trillions of pieces – are being dumped every year and ending up polluting our landscapes and poisoning our oceans.
Have a look at this article we published earlier to learn more.
Once it’s in our seas and oceans, or embedded in our soils, plastic is virtually impossible to remove. We cannot reverse what has been done but we can work to limit future damage by stopping the use of single-use plastic packaging now.
Why this challenge?
- Kids’ snacks are a major source of single use plastic pollution, it needs to stop
- Get the family involved in doing something positive for the environment
- Introduce an element of competitiveness so siblings and friends work to get the plastic count down
- Educate your child about the plastic pollution problem and the need for collective action
- Introduce a wider environmental conscience to your child
- Demonstrate to our young people that we care about the environment we are leaving to them
Please take action and reduce the impact of your lunchboxes on our wildlife and sealife, thank you.