Green Daily

These days, we're conditioned to believe that we if want to take coffee from home to work in the morning, we need a special travel mug in which to do so. Same goes for bringing lunch to school or work, we need special containers, boxes and bags in order to bring our food along. So when those specialty containers go missing, we give up and just buy our lunch instead.

Start to expand your understanding of what you can take with you. If your travel mug has gone missing, carry your coffee to work in a Mason jar (a well-rinsed spaghetti sauce jar works really well as long you as you cool the coffee a bit). Wrap a cloth napkin around the jar and you are good to go. When I was growing up, my dad would often forgo the jar altogether, walking out of the house with his coffee in a regular old mug (my mother didn't love this habit, as he would often have half the available mugs in the passenger foot well of his car by the end of the week).

Want to bring your soup from home, but you don't want to reheat in a plastic container? Use a plastic container saved from the last time you ordered Chinese food to carry the soup and keep a ceramic bowl at your desk for reheating. If you're packing lunch for your kids, think about reusing small lidded yogurt containers for cut fruit and old jam jars for veggie dip or hummus.