School lunch packing already has a lot of challenges: figuring out how to pack lunches kids will actually eat, keeping the lunches fun and interesting, all the planning and shopping for what you need to make the lunch, and then just finding the time to do it. It’s a LOT, I get it.

Thinking about how to do all this in a more environmentally friendly way and while sticking to a budget can sometimes feel like just a little too much. That extra layer of stress on top of your already overwhelming workload as a busy parent might feel like more than you can do.

But I’ve been packing lunches for 15 years and I’ve got loads of tips that can help you.

Making lunches that are nicer on the environment can be easier than you think, and can often be more cost effective too.

Cost is an important factor that often gets overlooked in posts about lunch packing supplies. It’s easy to fall into the Pinterest and social media trap with all the influencers, but so many of the things people are recommending to you are really expensive. I’ve got four kids so I’ve needed to buy a lot of everything, so making sure I’m getting the most for my money is really important to me. And I think it probably is to you too - now more than ever.

I’m here to tell you can it is totally possible to pack lunches that are more environmentally friendly and create a lot less trash without breaking your budget.

In fact, I think most of these tips are going to end up saving you money in the long run!

I think of eco friendly or environmentally friendly lunch packing as a spectrum. You can go all the way to the one end of the spectrum and use no plastic whatsoever, or you can be more on the other end and still use plastic containers but try hard to avoid single use plastics and other disposable things. The right mix is going to be different for everyone, depending on your family needs, how hardcore you want to be, and your budget. Being able to afford all of the organic, plastic free, bespoke stainless steel lunch containers and supplies is a luxury and a privilege that most of us don’t have, so you have to find the comfort zone that works for you.

I feel like every little thing we do can help make a difference, so even if we can’t go hardcore 100% eco friendly everything we can still make small changes that add up. Personally, I’m still comfortable with reusable plastic containers. These lightweight, durable containers help me minimize our single use plastics and other trash, while also still fitting in to a family budget. So read on if you’re ok with some plastics in your lunch supplies. If you are hardcore against all plastics, then my recommendations might not be for you.

Here are my top tips for environmentally friendly and budget friendly lunch packing:

Keep reading below for loads of detail about how you can do all of this on a budget.

Reusable containers, napkins, utensils, etc.
Compostable and recyclable bags and utensils
Minimize pre-packacked foods
Meal plan your kid’s lunch
Pack lunch ahead of time

1: Reusable containers and other items:

The biggest impact you can have on making your lunch packing more eco friendly is reusable supplies like containers and lunchboxes.

Everyone’s favorite most eco friendly lunch containers are stainless steel. And yes those are pretty awesome, but they are expensive. It might be ok if you just have one kid and they don’t tend to lose things or leave their lunch box at school. But if you have more than one kid, who is absent minded and forgetful like most kids are, buying multiple $30-$40 (and sometimes $50+!) lunch containers can break the bank real fast.

My favorite lunch container is a simple bento style lunch box, and our favorite one is the EasyBoxes. This one is plastic, but that’s part of what makes it so cost effective. You can literally get 10 of these for less than the cost of a single popular brand stainless steel container, and less than half the price of a single one of another popular brand.

I know some people don’t want to use plastic, but if you are trying to buy reusable lunch items on a budget it’s hard to justify the price of most of the ones that aren’t plastic. And I think the plastic is not so bad when you are going to get many years of use out of it. Some of our EasyBoxes containers are more than 15 years old and still really solid, so we’re not filling landfills with plastic containers.

If you really want a metal lunch box, the Blue Water Bento Splash Box by Ecolunchbox are my favorite. They are not as popular as some other brands but I’ve used most of the popular brands and I like these the best. And they are one of the more reasonably priced stainless steel options. The silicone lids are actually leakproof, while still being easy for kids to open and close, which I don’t think any other brand can boast, and they nest together for easier storage. They look small but they are really deep, so you can fit a lot in there.

They look small but they hold a lot - these are the Blue Water Bento Splash Box and Splash Pod.

In addition to the lunch box itself, you’ll want to consider a few other items.

Sandwich boxes: you might not always need a full bento box so it’s nice to have a few sandwich sized boxes around. These are also great for quesadillas or other snacks. I’m a big fan of the Sistema brand sandwich boxes, we have quite a few of these that have lasted us for more than 10 years. Lunchbots makes a nice stainless box that fits a sandwich, a lot more expensive but they last for a very long time.

Silicone bags and pouches: These can replace disposable plastic bags for sandwiches and snacks. These Stasher brand are great and very popular, but they can get pretty expensive if you need more than a couple of them. I’ve had these less expensive ones for many years now and have been very happy with them. I use these to make smoothie packs for my teens.

Cloth napkins: I don’t know about you, but my kid will come home with food all over his shirt if I don’t send him with a napkin. But don’t buy expensive ones, because kids are unreliable and they lose things. My favorite lunch napkins over the years have actually been little washcloths. You can get sets of small kitchen cloths for quite inexpensive, or take a bigger cloth or old towel and cut it into pieces. Or if you still have that stack of little baby washcloths sitting around and aren’t sure what to do with them, they make great lunch size napkins. I find that something made as a washcloth is more absorbent than ones sold as napkins, which works well for kids who tend to make a mess, and they are usually less expensive.

Reusable utensils: If you still have toddler utensils around that your kids have outgrown those make great lunch utensils, and they are probably just taking up space in the back of a kitchen drawer so you might as well use them. Smaller things fit the lunch box better and they are less likely to get lost if it fits actually inside the lunch container. And re-using something you already have is the ultimate in eco friendly. If you don’t still have those, then I recommend you buy some! They are the perfect size for lunch boxes. Don’t tell your kid they are for toddlers, just tell them they are special lunchbox sized spoon and fork. Here’s a really reasonably priced set of stainless steel utensils, or these are plastic and slightly less expensive and come in fun colors.

Drink containers: Most schools offer milk in little cartons, but if you’d prefer to avoid contributing to that waste or you want your kiddo to have organic milk, you can send milk and other cold drinks in an insulated drink container.These are a bit expensive but they last for years and I think they are a worthwhile investment. They come in loads of fun colors and prints. We use these for milk, water, juice.

Get creative! There’s no rule that says you have to pack lunch in a container that was made for lunch. One of my very favorite lunch boxes was actually a fun little pencil box. I found this in the $1 section at target many years ago and it’s the perfect size for a little box of nibbles. Look around and see what you have. You probably have other containers around that would be super fun to pack lunch in without spending extra money.

Ok yes this one does have some single use plastic in it, but I wanted to show you an example of using something that wasn’t sold as a lunch box.

I’ve also reused plastic produce containers for packing a field trip lunch. Sometimes it’s painful that we have to buy all those plastic containers in order to get the grapes or berries, so it’s nice to come up with ideas for how to re-use them. You can see that two of the lunches in the picture below are packed in repurposed berry containers.

2: Compostable and recyclable items

The next best thing to totally reusable is stuff that is compostable or recyclable. There’s more and more of this kind of thing available now, which also means it’s getting less expensive. The catch here is that your kids need to know it’s compostable or recyclable so they don’t just throw it in the trash! And of course the school needs to have compost and recycle bins available. I wouldn’t really recommend this stuff for the younger kids, asking them to sort their lunch into compost and recycle is probably a bit too much. But middle and high school kids can certainly do this and probably can better appreciate the need for it too.

Sandwich and snack bags: I personally prefer the coated paper bags vs. the compostable zipper ones that are a bit like plastic. I think the paper ones hold up better for kids lunches. At the time of publishing these ones were currently the least expensive, they come in fun colors and a few sizes too. I’ll keep an eye out and update my eco-friendly Amazon list as I find others. These are great for sandwiches but also any kind of other snacks, cut up fruit and veggies, crackers, and more.

Classic paper lunch bags: I guess these fell out of favor with all the reusable lunch bags and containers, but I still think they’re great. I always keep paper bags around for packing field trip lunches, plus they’re great for crafts and lots of other uses too. Sometimes I prefer the white bags, because I like to draw pictures on field trip lunch bags and white bags are just a little nicer for this. They’re probably not quite as environmentally friendly in terms of how they are made, but still just as easy to compost or recycle.

Bamboo or wood utensils: ok honestly not my favorite, I think they’re expensive and more trouble than they are worth. I’d much rather use washable ones. But if you really don’t want to have to wash and you really don’t want plastic, there are options that are bamboo or wood or I think some even made from corn that will work for you.

Paper napkins: No big tips here, we buy the big pack at Costco.

3: Buy in bulk and package your own

I think one of the biggest sources of trash at schools is all the little plastic packages from the individually packed snacks. So. Much. Trash.

Instead you can buy bigger containers and make your own snack packs. This takes a bit of time but if you do it once a week and keep a bin stocked and ready to go then lunch packing is still very quick and easy. Do this with crackers and cookies, fruits, veggies, and really anything you can think of. If you’re concerned about some things staying fresh if you pack they days ahead of time, check out this post with my secret for keeping apples from turning brown, or this post with allllll of my tips for packing lunch ahead of time.

The best part though - you will spend a LOT less money. Those little packages are the most expensive way to buy snack foods. You will save a lot of money if you buy the bigger bags and divide it into servings yourself.

If you use a bento lunchbox with little sections for each item, then you don’t even need to package the foods separately. But if you want to send some items individually packaged for snacks, you’ll need some containers for making your own snack packs, so here area few recommendations:

Yogurt & applesauce pouches: these are easy to fill and wash and come in a few sizes and prints. If you prefer silicone, these also come in a few sizes and are easy to wash. We have used these for many years. They are a bit more expensive but will last a really long time.

Silicone snack size bags. I don’t love these for little kids because I find them harder to close, but they are good for older kids. I have this brand as mentioned above, they come in a variety of sizes.

A variety of smaller sized reusable containers. These can be any combination of metal, silicone, or plastic. Remember those little toddler sized snack cups? Get those suckers back out and reuse them for school snacks. They are a great size. My favorite EasyBoxes makes a snack sized box that is great for a few little nibbles. You can find plastic containers, silicone containers, metal containers, metal containers with silicone lids - the possibilities are endless and I’ve have put a few favorites in my amazon list for you to chose from. Prices are really going to vary, stainless steel are going to be the most expensive and plastic the least expensive so you just have to figure out what works with your budget, but it’s nice to have a little variety of sizes for different needs.

4: Meal plan your kids’ lunch

I know this sounds a little crazy, but if you’ve ever done any dinner meal planning for your family then you know that it’s one of the best ways to save money. I also think it’s one of the best ways to help your family eat healthy, and it’s better for the environment. We are much less likely to reach for fast food, or processed foods, or foods with lots of single use trash plastic if we’ve got dinner already planned and shopped for and even prepped ahead of time.

And all this applies to lunch as well. A simple plan for what you are going to pack for lunch each day for the week ahead means you can shop all at once, take a little time to prep, and buy a lot less packaged snack foods. You will spend less money, and it will be more eco-friendly, for all the reasons I’ve already listed above.

I like to use a simple template for planning lunches - a general set theme for each day of the week - so it gives us the right balance of predictability without monotony. You can find all my tips about how to do this in this post.

5: Pack lunch ahead of time

Yes yes I’m a broken record about this. But I’ll stand on my soapbox again and tell you that packing lunch ahead of time is the solution to so many problems.

You can pack several days lunches at once, and have them in the fridge to grab and go. You might wonder why I include this in a post about environment and budget friendly lunch packing, and here’s why: When you are short on time, trying to throw together lunch at the last minute when you have to get kids to school and yourself to work, you are much more likely to reach for expensive and plastic packaged processed foods. You’re spending a lot more money, using a lot more single-use plastics, and creating a lot more trash when you relying and these convenience foods.

But if you buy in bulk, and prep a stack of lunches all at once then you are far less likely to need to reach for the expensive and not environmentally friendly plastic packages. Packing ahead forces you to think ahead, so you can take the time to fill those reusable containers, cut up fruit and veggies and put in reusable snack bags. I’ve heard all the questions and concerns about lunches that sit in the fridge, and I have solutions to all those questions in my full post about packing lunch ahead of time.

So there you go - my best tips for packing lunch with a little more care for our planet and without breaking the budget.

I hope you found this helpful.

Happy Lunch Packing!

Eco Friendly and budget friendly Lunch Packing