Product Review: LunchSkins and the Fuel Everest Sandwich Box

I'm a big fan of brown bagging breakfast and lunch for my day ahead at the office. But I started to notice just how many plastic baggies I was using to pack sandwiches and other goodies. Sometimes I'd try to save the cleanish baggies and reuse them but, let's face it, most of them got thrown away at the end of the day. So in an effort to do a little more reusing and a little less wasting, I started doing research on plastic baggy alternatives. I wanted to find something that was easy to clean and BPA/phthalate free. After some internet cruising, the options that seemed most appealing were LunchSkins reusable sandwich bags and the Trudeau Fuel Everest Sandwich Box. I decided to order both to see which one I liked best.

I chose one LunchSkin sandwich bag ($8.95) and two LunchSkin snack bags ($7.85). The smaller bag is the snack bag:

They seal with velcro and it's really easy to slide sandwiches into them (but you can also use them for other things, like leftover chopped veggies from dinner). They're also dishwasher friendly, which is great, but I've noticed that I've sometimes had to wipe them down after a wash 'cause not all the nooks and crannies got rinsed. I think perhaps putting them in the dishwasher inside out might help with that. 

I also ordered one Trudeau Fuel Everest Sandwich box (does this seem like an unnecessarily long name to anyone else?). I found varying prices for these on Amazon/Ebay but the average was about $8.50. Don't have a real-life photo of this one 'cause I think it's with Roberto at work:

The plastic construction makes it very easy to clean and it snaps close with one click. I've been pretty impressed with it and think I'll order at least one more in the future.

Overall, I've been happy with both products. At first they seemed a bit pricey, but if I think about how many boxes of plastic baggies we'd buy each year, we eventually come out ahead at the end of the day. And, hey, we're not putting as much plastic out there in the environment. I think it's a win win for sandwiches and mother nature.