By Sandra Ann Harris
Heavens, no more plastic baggies? Everyone at the pre-school did it. And we kept running out. I remember the sinking feeling when the box would go empty.
How would I pack my pre-schooler’s lunch? The cut apple slices, the fishy crackers, the half of a PBJ and so on all typically went into plastic baggies…. how would I get my son’s food to school with him?
It dawned on me there must be a better way to pack a lunch without so many throw-aways. Ah-ha! It was an eco revelation. And what about the throw-away paper napkins and the yogurt squeezy sacks, the plastic-wrapped cheese sticks, the pre-packaged energy bars, the juice boxes and the sacks and all the other garbage that was piling up at our pre-school? Could we get rid of all that, too?
No rocket science here, but it was the dawning of a new day when it came to packing lunch at our house. There would be no more panic attacks for me when the plastic baggy box ran dry. In fact, there would be no more trash at lunch. Period.
I didn’t really have in mind to set out and start my own socially conscious business when the idea first dawned on me that there was a need in the marketplace for a plastic-free, 100% non-toxic lunchware solution. I had small children and I couldn’t frankly see time in my busy days to be a mompreneur. So I resolved to shop a little harder and try and find what I needed out there on the shelves of a store somewhere. This proved impossible, however, because in 2008 plastic-free, non-toxic lunchware wasn’t yet available in the United States and other Western countries.
So, in my mission to at least reduce dependence on single-use, leachy plastics was move over to Tupperware. At least plastic containers were better than plastic baggies and throw-away plastic from pre-packaged cheese sticks, yogurt cups, etc…. But there were some problems we discovered right away with the plastic food containers. Firstly, my kids couldn’t open the tight-lidded little containers. They’d come home with the food I had so lovingly packed still untouched in the un-openable plastic tubs. And I was worried about the toxins in plastics I was starting to hear about. Was it B-P-A? What did that mean? And could those Berkeley folks, the overprotective granola types, really be right that plastic was poisoning us?
So I decided to put my investigative journalism background to work and find out which plastics were OK and free of BPA (bisphenol-A, an endocrine disrupted believed to be a cancer causer) and just use this kind of plastic. Was it the squeezy Ketchup-bottle plastics that were bad and the rigid plastics OK? I tried that for awhile, but news on plastics kept shifting. There was a recall of hard plastic water bottles determined to have BPA and another aluminum water bottle company with a plasticized lining also was recalled since they both contained BPA. I was also concerned about plastic waste in our environment.
These concerns I had as a mother and steward of Mother Earth were the seeds that started ECOlunchbox. There was no business plan at first – just my kitchen table and a desire to boot out toxins and trash in my own kids’ lunches. I scoured the stores to find something non-plastic and non-breakable to pack my kids’ lunches in and alas came up completely dry.
Finally, on a dusty shelf at the back of an Indian market in Fremont, Calif. I found what I was looking for – sort of. It was a flimsy metal tin with two layers that snapped together. The shape was wrong for what we needed. It was round and wouldn’t fit a sandwich. But I bought a few of these “tiffins,” as I later learned they are called, for my family and friends and we started using them for our kids’ lunches. They were thin and poorly made, but the concept was great. Using these traditional containers that have been a go-to for generations in India and Asia, was a great way to cut out the plastic toxins and the waste in one fell swoop! I designed a cotton backpack-style bag sewn from artisan printed cottons that my son and daughter could use to carry these containers and we added some cloth napkins. We called it a “free lunch,” because it’s free of waste, plastic, BPA, PVC, vinyl that we want to keep out of our lunches.
So in 2009 when my youngest child was in kindergarten, I launched ECOlunchbox at a local craft fair with a few dozen lunchboxes and plans to sell to friends and family. The response to our stainless steel food containers and handmade cotton lunch bags with napkins was strong and I did a couple more local events before I was contacted by Whole Foods Markets. They were interested in bringing on my line. That’s why I realized that the business had potential beyond my kitchen table.
Seven years later, we have greatly expanded our product line, outgrown my kitchen table, sold more than 300,000 ECOlunchboxes, and contributed to the aversion of tens of millions of pieces of trash worldwide! We’re annually offsetting the CO2 equivalent of the 2.5 million pounds of coal burned. To put it another way, that’s a whole year’s worth of electricity usage for 316 houses. Our distribution has grown organically over the years and we have scaled by reinvesting our profits in to expanding our product line and selling to more and more stores all over the United States and the world.
My family alone has averted more than 20,000 pieces of trash since that ah-ha moment years ago. In our Lunchbox Waste Study, we determined that a typical family packing a traditional wasteful lunch creates 4,320 pieces of trash annually and spends about $400 unnecessarily on throw-aways. We hope our lunch study can inspire you to join us in making a difference at lunchtime!
I credit my children for being my inspiration. I credit my husband for being there at my side as we overcame so many obstacles to bring ECOlunchbox to market. And I give thanks for our success to consumers everywhere who joined me in believing there could be a better, healthier way for both people and planet of packing a daily lunch.
