Zero Waste School Lunch: What I Pack for My Kids Every Day (No Plastic Wrap) By Chester Takau · July 2026 · First-Hand Experience Two years ago I counted the plastic wrapping from one week of school lunches. Six kids, five days, one wrap per sandwich minimum. Thirty pieces of plastic, more if you count the snack bags. I stopped counting. I am not a zero-waste purist and I am not going to pretend this is easy. Some mornings the reusable container is not washed, someone needs a birthday cake wrapped for sharing, the beeswax wrap is not where it should be. Things happen. But over two years of switching lunch packaging gradually — one item at a time rather than all at once — we have got to a point where a normal school week produces almost no single-use plastic from lunches. Here is what actually works. The sandwich problem The sandwich is where most lunch packaging waste comes from. The solution that finally stuck for us is beeswax wrap — not because it is the most conve...