Get your FREE 30-day trial.
Please complete all fields.
Lunch. A time we all look forward to. A time to catch up with friends, take a break, and grab a bite to eat. As much as we think about lunch as an everyday activity, the choices we make during lunch have more of an impact on our planet than you may think.
According to RecycleWorks, a program of San Mateo County, disposal lunches can generate between 4-8 ounces of garbage every day, totaling up to nearly 100 pounds of waste per year – and that's just for one person! But it doesn't have to be that way.
With the 3 tips below, we'll show you how you can take small, yet important, steps towards a less-wasteful, more sustainable lunch.
Remember the last time you had lunch catered to your office for a meeting or presentation? Assuming folks use single-use plates, cups, silverware, and napkins, a huge amount of waste is generated when we throw our disposables away. But there's an easy solution to this problem: reusables.
Why not keep a plate, bowl, cloth napkin, and silverware at your desk for these occasions? You can also use your own mug for coffee or tea rather than using a disposable paper cup every time you go for a refill, and save an average of 23 pounds of waste in one year. By switching to recyclables, we can all save an incredible amount of paper and plastic, putting less stress on our waste management systems and on our environment.
In an ideal world, we could all bring healthy lunches from home in reusable containers every day, but it is often difficult to find the time to make a lunch before running out the door. Instead, we are faced with the choice of where to buy lunch , and must weigh options about what purchase might be best for our wallet, our health, and the environment.
The main issue with takeout food is the packaging – it is just better for the environment to minimize using disposable items as much as possible. Even when packaging is recyclable, a large amount of water, oil, and energy goes into making bags and containers in the first place, and then more resources are consumed when running these items through the recycling process.
The best way to avoid packaging is to dine in at a restaurant that uses reusable dishware. If you don't have time to sit down at a restaurant, seek out lunches packaged in compostable materials like paper, cardboard, or compostable plastic. Lately, I'm personally trying to take this a step further, and have brought a metal lunch tin with a lid to my office. I've found that most local lunch places are more than happy to use my container instead of their disposable ones – I just hand it to them at the counter when I order. Try it!
Another way to make your lunch (and every meal) more environmentally friendly is to reduce or eliminate meat consumption. The care and feeding of animals for food consumes a tremendous amount of resources. To produce one pound of animal protein, it takes about 12 times as much land, 13 times as much fossil fuel, and 15 times as much water as the production of a pound of soy protein. Also, raising animals for food produces more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation and most other industries – you might make a bigger contribution to conservation by giving up meat than by switching to a hybrid car!
Not ready to completely give up meat? Even opting to go vegetarian for some meals or on certain days makes a difference. Consider participating in Meatless Mondays, a global movement encouraging people to give up meat once a week. Fowl like chicken and turkey have a smaller environmental footprint than beef or pork, so that can be a more sustainable choice. Some seafood is also sustainable, but there are different environmental issues to consider. Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program is a great way to keep track of the environmental impact of particular seafoods, and you can even download their phone app so you'll always have this information whenever you go.
Taking steps towards greening your life doesn't mean you have to make drastic changes. You can make a difference simply by consciously choosing to make more environmentally-friendly decisions with regards to your food choices and packaging containers.
The next time you grab lunch, don't forget to bring your reusables or consider going vegetarian for a meal. The Earth will thank you for it.
Learn more about how Salesforce puts our people and our planet first at www.salesforce.com/company/sustainability.
