sage philosphy: greening school lunches

It looks like much of the internet is thinking about back to school right now, and many blogs are discussing, in one form or another, lunches with less waste.

There is a fantastic post at Want Not right now covering all of the options I was going to post here. Conservation counts on the web, too, so hop on over to the lovely Mir’s site and check out the original question, her suggestions, and the bountiful comments. Ask Moxie also covered the topic with amazing detail and insightful comments last September.

Two Green Chickens posts a pattern from the Small Object, I see how this could be done easily with tablecloths and fabric sourced at tag sales and thrift stores. Time to finally get that new sewing machine! And the Etsy Spotlight today is on all sorts of mama-made and vintage lunch items, too.

So now that you have the perfect bento box for your grade schooler, what are you to do when they’d rather eat the standard (and pretty unexceptional) school lunch fare? I’ll gather up links for greening your school lunch program and post on that soon!

sage finds — august 11

A rundown of green school supplies was posted over the weekend at Green Mom Finds. We start pre-K in a few weeks (at a public Montesorri school our city… how cool is that?) so I need to find the list and see if I can get any of these items locally before turning to online resources.

This week Target also has “Green Gear” school supplies on sale:

• Maped 5 ct recycled pencils $1
• Recycled 500 sheet multipurpose paper $3
• 1″ recycled 3 ring binder $3
• 15% off recycled portfolios and composition books

Based on the deals I’m seeing at Hy-Vee HealthMarket, I wish we had one near us!

Earthbound Farms Organic Romaine Salad is on sale for $2.88. Click here for a $1/1 coupon.

Cascadian Farms Cereal, Granola, or Granola Bars are on sale for $3.00. Click here to print an unlimited number of $1/1 coupons!

As usual, the coupons will work at Whole Foods or any other store, if you don’t happen to have this store near you, either.

Online surveys usually don’t pay off in terms of what you get for your time, but it looks like the CVS Advisor program, which pays in ExtraCare Bucks, might be an exception, according to Dealicious Mom:

Sign up here to become a CVS Advisor. If you haven’t done this already, this is a good way to earn approximately 10-15 dollars in ECBs every couple of weeks for taking short surveys. I have taken 3-4 surveys and I have been paid 10 or 15 dollars each time. The ECBs have printed out a few weeks later from the scanner in the store.