Easy Meal Prep Recycling Ideas
There’s a new secret to eating healthy home-cooked dishes every day, and it’s called meal prep. Meal prepping begins by crafting and cooking a few meals for the week ahead and portioning them out appropriately. With all the perfectly organized #MealPrep pictures on Instagram and Facebook, learning how to start can be inspiring.
With some smart planning, meal prepping is a great way to eat healthy, save time, and save money. Even more importantly, meal prepping is an awesome way to help the environment. Minimizing food waste and garbage will save natural resources for decades to come. Need help getting started? Here are a few meal prep recycling tips to get you get ready.
Lunch Prep all Wrapped Up
Sandwich, snack, fruit, cookies, drink…repeat. There’s a lot of packaging in all those regular lunches that end up in the trash. Plastic film wrap, plastic bags, sandwich bags, juice pouches, and fruit snack pouches are all not accepted by recycling facilities. Limit your trash with meal prep. Purchase foods that are not individually wrapped and try reusing your baggies. Send food like pudding and applesauce in reusable containers. Paper lunch bags are old-school. Reusable lunch bags, Tupperware, and glass containers all save money in the long run and enable kids to take those containers and baggies back home easily.
Divide and Container Conquer
Buying all that food in bulk and then dividing it up saves you money every week. No time? Meal prepping let you get a week’s worth of lunches at one time and then pluck them from the fridge as needed. Bulk item purchases help limit the number of small plastic trash in each meal. Some great shareable snacks include large submarine sandwiches or family sized bags of chips.
You’re in the Lead
At school, kids learn by example. When they open their lunch every day, let’s show them we care about the environment, they will follow our lead. You can teach your kids more about what’s recyclable using our online Recycling Guide.
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