Waste Free Lunches

We hope that Back To School is going beautifully for all of you with BTSers in the house.

Here's a great resource to help you go waste free with you and your students' lunches this year: wastefreelunches.org.  

Have you heard about that science/math project where you carry around your trash for a week to see how much stuff you actually throw away four times a month or fifty-two times a year? According to Waste Free Lunches, each school-age child generates 67 pounds of lunch-related trash every year. Multiply that by all the kids at your child's school and we've got a serious math problem on our hands. 

What to do about all that trash going to the landfill?  You can ditch the mini snack bags and plastic baggies and invest in stylish and lightweight reusable utensils, lunch carriers, napkins, and water bottles.  You can even get your whole school community involved in the problem-solving fun with the "how to" section of the website as your guide! (And, you could save over 200 dollars a year per person in the process.) Read all about the success stories across the country here.

Stay tuned for more specific ideas of what products might work for you as you embark on the zero waste adventure.  To reusability and beyond!

Back to School Month

As if you didn't already know, September is Back to School Month.  So, we're taking our thematic cues from all those book-toting students of all ages out there and stocking the store with what you or your little scholar might need.

As a preview, here are a few things to focus on when choosing supplies and planning school days:

Prepare a waste-free lunch.  That's one whose packaging is all stuff that can be recycled, or better yet, reused again and again.  Reusable lunch containers are all the rage for learners and eaters big and small.

Choose totally recycled paper for notebooks and loose-leaf sheets, or paper from an unusual source that's tree-free and sustainable (more to come on those options!).

Bring your bottle!  A working brain is a thirsty brain, and same goes for a body. So, we've got SIGG bottles of all shapes and sizes so you can take water with you and skip the plastic bottle that's toxic for you and the world.

Consider sustainable, non-toxic writing utensils and markers.  Just think of all the throwaway plastic pens in our landfills.

And finally, you'll need something to carry your stuff in.  We've got bags for digital and old-fashioned school supplies made of wonderful stuff like hemp.

Come in and see if there's anything on your list that can be rethought and made green.