I will check out the alternatives you guys mentioned. Note that even the metal containers I've seen have plastic lids.

Things that still go in plastic are mostly wet things: baby oranges, baby carrots (I know, I know!), applesauce, the occasional pickle or (homemade) pudding cup. The baby carrots or pickles usually go in a disposable plastic baggie (horror!) because I don't have a reusable container that is the right size/shape for them.

Another thing to consider is the space all these reusable containers take up in a lunchbox. That's one reason I made the snack sacks for the dry treats like pretzels or cookies. The snack sacks are flexible, can be folded & tucked into a lunchbox corner or pocket like a plastic baggie can. The hard reusable containers – I can only fit so many of them in the lunchbox!

I like the look of the bento boxes I've seen – maybe I'll try that when their current lunchboxes wear out.

In the meantime, I'll try to get a photo up on Make A Bag of our typical school lunch so y'all can make suggestions.

BTW – Chunky Monkey is my favorite ice cream flavor, and I don't like banana-flavored stuff typically!

The T-shirt, on the other hand (which you didn’t mention but which I feel obliged to expound upon now) was not my fault. I specifically requested that the sender use no plastic including plastic tape to send it to me. And the sender used plastic anyway. So I marked it “return to sender” without even opening it and sent an email explaining why. Yes, the plastic will end up in their garbage most likely, but that’s their karma.

These rules do get kind of arbitrary at times, don’t they? I had a discussion/argument early on with a reader who thought I should be including my husband’s personal plastic waste in my tally as well because of the benefit I get from living with him. By that logic, I should be including all my co-workers’ plastic too.

If I buy it or if I use it, I count it. If not, I don’t. Simple. So, okay, the pizza thingie goes in. Thanks for keeping me even more honest than I thought I was!!!

Beth: so great is my respect for you and your work, I am reluctant criticize, but I think that if you cause the demand for a plastic item, it needs to get tallied in your count. If you forgot to order the pizza without the plastic thingie, just accept your mistake, and add it to the tally. Taking it back to the pizza place (where they will almost certainly throw it away there), just offsets the plastic disposal to somewhere else. It's like calling an electric car a zero emissions vehicle. There certainly *are* emissions involved in making that car go, they're just not coming out of the tailpipe. Again, I hesitate to even say anything, because it's not like I've made the effort to do my own plastic tally, who am I to criticize others? So I hope you'll accept this as friendly commentary and not whoo-boy-one-of-THOSE-people.

Now, getting wound up in the details of how you tally your plastic bits is missing the big picture, I admit. So I just want to also say that your site has changed how I consume things. Small example: one of my administrative assistants at my office keeps a fully loaded bowl of bite-size chocolates on her desk, for everyone to share. I was trying to kick the habit of partaking, soley for health's sake, but that was an on-again-off-again practice. But when I considered the *plastic* I was consuming every time I unwrapped one of those candies, I was able to stop, cold turkey. Thanks!!

I’d love to find a plastic alternative for packaging foods for lunches. The metal ones just don’t work as well, are tough to open and glass can get thrown and broken.

Oh well. Hope you enjoyed the ice cream. :)