I have plastic, re-usable lunch boxes for my teens’ school lunches with paper lunch wrap and re-usable ice bricks for sandwiches needing to stay cool. All very environmentally friendly. (We had to make our own lunches for school when I was growing up from about the age of 10 but I know what kind of lunches I made so I make my offspring’s lunches for diet balance and health reasons - control freak?). Unfortunately these plastic lunchboxes often did not make it back to the kitchen for cleaning and storing for the next lunch time. They probably festered in the school bags or amongst the detritus that is their bedroom floors. It got to the point where I was having to use disposable plastic bags and was complaining about their complacency on the matter. Deaf ears!
The Lovely Husband and I have realised over the years that the way to get through to our adolescents is through their finances. That is where it hurts the most.
I threatened that unless I saw those lunchboxes in the plastics cupboard when I make their lunches in the mornings I would charge them an environmental fee. Still no action. OK, the next time I made their lunches and had to bag them instead of box them I wrote on the plastic bags “Environmental Fee $1”. When the offspring came to collect their lunches to pack there were moans and grumbles and those teenage glares but within half an hour I had three of the four lunchboxes in the kitchen sink for cleaning. The lunch boxes have miraculously turned up every day in the plastics cupboard ever since but I still have those dreaded plastic bags and permanent marker ready for action should I need them. Save the earth I say!
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