To recharge your batteries in between meetings at the office or for your kids in between classes, you need nourishing snacks. But eating tender bars, fruit sauces or individually packaged cheeses every day can generate a lot of waste. To reduce the amount of snack packaging, here are some simple tips to follow.

1. Opt for fresh food 

That’s the basic rule—and also the simplest thing to do. Bananas, kiwis and apples come with their own natural packaging and don’t even need to be prepared. As for vegetables, you can peel and cut them in advance to eat them during the week. Immerse them in water so that they stay crunchy longer. Buy fruits and vegetables in small quantities so you can vary your snacks every day and avoid waste because you no longer want to eat them. 

2. Prepare your own snacks

Are you more the tender-bar type or a muffin person at coffee break? Make them yourself! It takes a little more preparation time, but you can cook several batches of muffins at once and freeze them for a couple of weeks. To enhance raw vegetables, you can also prepare homemade dips made from mayonnaise or yogurt and divide them into individual portions in small containers.

3. Buying food in bulk

Nuts, dried fruit, crackers and some snacks are often offered in bulk at the grocery store. In addition to being a good choice for your wallet, these snacks are not individually packaged and so you only have to choose your desired amount before putting them in a reusable container. 

4. Choose large formats

Like bulk foods, products offered in large formats generate less waste than individual snacks. You can buy a few different bags of nuts (be careful to follow the rules of your children’s school), granola or even large containers of fruit sauces to vary the snacks from one day to the next.

5. Use reusable containers and packaging

There are of course those infamous airtight plastic dishes that we all have at home to transport our snacks, but new reusable packaging is appearing more and more on the market to suit all different types of foods and avoid overpackaging.

Beeswax packaging: These cotton sheets are coated with beeswax and are a great replacement for single-use plastic wrap. You can use them to pack wet fruits and vegetables.

Resealable plastic bags: To replace the small disposable plastic zipper bag, use soft plastic resealable bags. They fit easily in the lunch box or backpack and take up less space than a rigid plastic container.

Old disposable containers: Empty peanut butter jars, jam jars or small glass yogurt jars can be reused to hold lots of different snacks after you’ve washed them.