GreenSage E-zine 06/2008

One Lunch Your Kids Will Love While Saving the Environment

Last month we guided you through the world of plastics, their related health concerns and recyclability. You may be wondering what are some convenient alternatives to the various ways you and your family currently use plastic — and where to start?

Some of our greatest concerns about plastic are where they come into contact with our food. And particularly, when its the food our kids eat. So, we want to start where our greatest concerns are — packing lunches for the kids.

This month we introduce a great alternative to using plastic for your kids' lunches. Kids Konserve waste-free, with low plastic use, lunch kit.

The idea for Kids Konserve is the natural outgrowth of what two women saw as a big need that required immediate attention. With the premise that any business they undertook had to help the environment in some way, it didn't take much imagination to see how they, as parents of young children, were contributing to garbage landfills and pollutants — in effect behaving like the people they didn't want to be. How could they set an example of conservation for their children and empower them to be the examples of change for the future?

Focusing on how school lunches create so much waste, much of which is not recycled, opened their eyes and became the incentive that propelled them to create Kids Konserve.

Calculating the amount of trash being produced each day at their own schools during the lunch hour, multiplied by the number of schools in their districts shocked them enough to begin more research into reusable products for waste free lunch kits that will dramatically cut down on Earth's ever growing garbage pile, while using materials that are as food safe and eco-friendly as possible.

They designed this lunch kit carefully and purposefully so that everything in the kit can be re-used daily — lunch after lunch. The kits are convenient, stylish, easy to wash and safe.

The reusable waste-free lunch kit is comprised of two stainless steel round food containers, a stainless steel beverage bottle, a Food Kozy for wrapping sandwiches, snacks, fruit or special treats, and a cloth napkin — all delivered in a recycled cotton sack.

The Food Kozy was developed to be a reusable alternative to plastic baggies. Its made from the safest, non-leaching PE (polyethylene) plastic available on the market. Its FDA approved, non-toxic. There is no Bisphenol-A (BPA) and labeled #1 plastic. It is easily washed with warm soapy water. You can use a minimum amount of plastic baggies and plastic wrap, saving some bucks, by incorporating this hand washable food kozy for all your food wrapping needs.

Kids Konserve lunch kit uses stainless steel food containers and bottles, which are the safer alternative to plastic or aluminum bottles and food containers. Their stainless steel is premium food grade, non-leaching and the safest, bacteria free material to put any type of food or drink in. Stainless is very easy to recycle and put to good use again, but above all its durable and won't need replacement almost ever, saving you money while keeping the throw-aways out of the environment!

Rounding out this eco-friendly kit are cotton cloth napkins, which were around long before tree consuming paper napkins, and a recycled cotton sack containing the entire kit that fits nicely into childrens' backpacks — or you can use the kit in your own lunch box. Currently in development are eco-friendly, water proof lunch sacks.

Launch of the Kids Konserve reusable, waste-free lunch kit is the first step to educate and outreach to our youngest citizens in school as well as to the greater public. We can all choose to reuse with products made from eco-friendly materials and make a difference.