A Guide to Sustainable Meal Prep

Why meal prep? Prepping food ahead of time to eat throughout the week can help you save time, money, calories, food waste, and disposable waste from takeout.

By planning and batching your meals, you can have better control over what ingredients you’re eating and avoid the decision fatigue that comes with figuring out every meal. It makes that much easier to make healthy decisions if your food is already made.

Sustainable meal prep takes it further by eliminating single-use waste and microplastics while making the most out of every ingredient so nothing goes into the garbage.

Sustainable Meal Prep Essentials

When packing lunch, you want to avoid disposable waste and toxins from things like plastic sandwich baggies, paper napkins, cling wrap, old plastic tupperware, plastic water bottles, and especially plastic thermoses that will be holding hot liquids.

Prioritize food-safe reusables or compostables, and materials like food-grade stainless steel, glass, wood, and silicone.

• Thermos: the To-Go Tumbler is our choice for on-the-go coffee, tea, or soup, with double-walled, vacuum insulated stainless steel to keep liquids hot. Bonus: fits in your cupholder.
• Sandwich box: the 2-Layer Sandwich Box is the perfect lightweight, food-grade stainless steel bento box with two removable layers for a sandwich on top and a salad or snack below.
• Stainless steel food containers: You’ll also want some food-grade Airtight Stainless Steel Containers for things like soups, big salads, grain bowls, and other eats. When not in use, they nest for easy storage.
• Reusable cutlery: Don’t forget your Utensil Set! It’s slim and compact, and keeps your silverware clean during transport.
• Silicone bags: We love the Reusable Silicone Sandwich Bag and Reusable Silicone Snack Bag for hardy but flexible baggies that are microwavable, dishwashable, freezer-safe, BPA-, PVA-, and latex-free.
• Compostable or reusable wrap: Our Compostable Cling Wrap is designed to break down in the compost faster than an orange peel. Our ultra-thin, durable Reusable Stretch Wrap is oven-safe, dishwasher-safe, microwavable, lead-free, and BPA-free.

Glass jars: our re_ Glass Jars come in several sizes for zero waste grocery refills and meal prep alike. They look organized in your fridge, can be microwaved (without their lids), and allow you to see what’s inside for easy grab and go.

• Reusable bag: Carry it all in a reusable Organic Cotton Pocket Tote or 100% recycled Thank You Tote to add some personality.
• Water bottle: We love a Glass Water Bottle with a silicone sleeve, lightweight vacuum-insulated Active Tumbler, or double-walled Travel Tumbler for replacing plastic water bottles.

To learn more about what’s behind different materials, check out our Glossary.

Sustainable Meal Prep Tips

Now that you’ve assembled your sustainable supplies, let’s talk about what goes inside. Here are our tips for planning and prepping your food for the week.

Be strategic with leftovers

Don’t forget to factor leftovers into your meal plan, or you’ll end up with too much food. Keep your sustainable food storage containers ready to go so tonight’s dinner out can be tomorrow’s office lunch. If it’s not quite enough, adding fresh or steamed veggies on the side can go a long way. Our guide to leftovers here.

Plan for double

Same idea behind leftovers: one of the easiest ways to reduce your meal-planning stress during the week is to simply double each meal. Making a tofu stir fry or picking up sushi? Grab twice what you would. Repeat for each meal.

Pre-portion your food

This is the class meal prep you think of—making a big batch of food and dividing it into organized, pre-portioned containers. It makes it much more likely that you’ll actually eat your healthy, pre-prepped food if it’s already portioned out in re_ jars, plus you can visualize exactly how many days the food will stretch for better planning.

Add fresh extras

If you’re batching food for the week, you might wait to add components like fresh herbs, green onions, or a squeeze of citrus until the day-of so all the flavors stay extra fresh.

Choose a meal-prep day

If you find meal prep daunting, choose a specific day of the week to prep your meals. This might be Sunday afternoon before the work week when you’ve gotten your grocery haul, or maybe Monday morning so you get an extra day of freshness with the food.

Mix together a big batch of chia pudding by whisking chia seeds with your milk and sweeteners of choice, let chill for an hour, then whisk again and pre-portion into our 9oz Glass Jars with fresh cut fruit and other toppings of choice.

Lean vegetarian

On the whole, plant-based foods require far less energy, water, land, and other resources to produce, making them a more sustainable option. If you’re looking for the most sustainable meal prep, opt for protein sources like tofu, legumes, and nut butters, and swap milk and cheese for dairy-free kinds.

Build balanced meals

Planning your meals in advance gives you a chance to think about your dietary goals—things like getting in your macronutrients, aiming for 30 plants a week, or eating the rainbow. For more ideas on meal prep nutrition, read about food combos that increase nutrient absorption.

Switch things up

If you find eating the same thing every day to be monotonous, switch up the hot sauce or dressing, change the location where you eat lunch, or eat your prepped food for dinners some days and lunch other days to change things up.

Don’t forget your freezer

Your freezer and pantry come in handy later in the week when your fresh meal prep has run out. If you have yogurt and frozen fruit on hand, you can always blend up a Friday smoothie. If you keep canned beans stocked, like Tomato Alla Vodka Cannellini Beans or Kimchi Sesame Navy Beans, you’ll always have food ready.

We like to freeze our leftover Sourdough Bread into pre-cut slices in a Half-Gallon Silicone Bag for eating with beans or hummus when fresh prep has run out. Just throw it in the toaster from frozen, no need to thaw.

Choose easy fruits

Apples, bananas, and stone fruit like plums or nectarines already come with their own “packaging” and don’t require any cutting, making them an easy, no-prep snack to pack for lunches.

Wash your fruits and veggies first

For produce that stays fresh in your fridge the whole week, be sure to wash with our Fruit & Veg Wash. Setting out a bowl and laying down a clean, absorbent dish towel by your sink before your grocery run will help you get in the flow of washing and drying your fruits and veggies first thing before they ever go in the fridge.

Snacks can be a meal

If girl lunches taught us anything, it’s that snack foods put together can make a meal. If you’re too drained to cook food for meal prep, just cheat by pre-portioning out cut cheeses, veggies, yogurt or hummus, dried fruit, nuts, crackers, tinned fish like Sichuan Chili Crisp Smoked Salmon, or other snacks and call it lunch.

Get all the ingredients for these delicious Super Seedy Bars package-free @ re_ !

Make it cute

Compostable baking cups are a cute idea for sectioning out snacks in you or your kids’ lunch boxes. Cutting sandwiches into fun shapes with a cookie cutter or rolling thin wraps into rollups and cutting them into pinwheels are easy ways to entice a kid to enjoy their food. Done!

For more sustainable meal prep tips throughout the year, follow re_ on social!

Sustainable Meal Prep Ideas

You’ve got the meal prep fundamentals down, now here are some go-to ideas that work great for meal prep. Add these to your rotation and you’ve got a meal prep menu for weeks.

Chia pudding

Chia pudding or overnight oats make for a healthy breakfast, dessert, or a sweet snack. Great for digestive health, chia pudding chock full of antioxidants, essential ALA Omega-3, prebiotic fiber, and micronutrients.

Mix together a big batch of chia pudding by whisking chia seeds with your milk and sweeteners of choice, let chill for an hour, then whisk again and pre-portion into our 9oz Glass Jars with fresh cut fruit and other toppings of choice.

Here’s a chia pudding recipe we love.

Smoothies

Pre-portion cut fruit with greens and veggies into silicone bags, freeze, and just grab a bag to add to the blender with milk and yogurt or your protein powder of choice, like Vanilla Lacuma Protein Powder.

If you have extra greens or berries on hand, you can even blitz them together while they’re fresh and freeze in cubes to add to your smoothies later on.

Frittata cups

If you prefer a savory grab-and-go breakfast, frittata cups are a great choice and can be made with leftover ingredients that you already have on hand, like spinach, veggies, feta cheese or goat cheese crumbles, sundried tomatoes, and olives.

Jar salad

Use our 32oz Glass Jars to prep jar salads for the week. The trick with prepping any jar salad is to put the dressing on the bottom, then add more forgiving components like cooked chickpeas, tofu, tomatoes, cucumbers, or grains at the bottom. Finish with fresh lettuce or greens at the very top and wait to shake until right before you eat.

Jar ramen

Use the same glass jars for building your own ramen, starting with your flavoring mix and sauces at the bottom, followed by tofu, dehydrated mushrooms, green onions, and dried ramen, soba, or other noodles. When you’re ready to eat, just add boiling water to cook the noodles.

Chilled salads

Chilled salads like pasta salads, soba noodle salad, chickpea salad, or a Vietnamese chicken chop are great to pack for lunch because they require no heating at school or work. That means they can be eaten without a microwave, or without microwave smells.

Snack plate

Just like lunchables, but sustainable. We already touched on this, but snack plates are a versatile way to get a balanced meal, and kids love them. Add crackers, deli meat or cheese cubes, dips, fresh fruits, or veggies.

Our toxic trait: Needing to have a fun lunch every day 🥢 Shop our 2-layer stainless steel sandwich box for all your waste-free meal prep.

For a more adult-friendly version, try tinned fish like Sardines with Preserved Lemon and speciality snacks like Seeded Cassava Crackers, Carob Supergreen Chunks of Energy, or Dried Peaches as a high-fiber snack.

Snack bars

Seedy snack bars, seedy muffins, seedy oatmeal cups, Adventure Bread, and seedy crackers are all great for hearty, brain-boosting snacks. They pack plenty of fiber to level blood sugar (aka reduce energy crashes), along with brain-healthy fatty acids.

Beans

Beans lend well to big batches, are a sustainable protein source, and are so versatile! Cajun red beans and rice, vegetarian feijoada, Mediterranean bean and rice bakes, beans for toast, lentils for daal, legumes for grain bowls—so many options.

Soup

Soup is great for cozy meal prep in the winter, but don’t sleep on cold soups like gazpacho in the hotter months. Soups can also be pre-portioned in Stand-Up Silicone Bags or jars and frozen for later.

Bonus: Back-To-School Brain Foods and Snacks

Because it’s back-to-school season, we’ve got study snacks on the mind. Here are some after-school snacks and lunchbox treats they won’t want to trade:

• Dried Apple Rings for classic fall flavor
• Walnuts for brain-boosting nutrition
• Yummy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Chunks of Energy
• Popcorn: Pop a big batch for meal prep, season how they like it
• Yogurt-Covered Pretzels for an after-school pick-me-up
• Chocolate Cinnamon Cereal Squares for zero-waste breakfast
• Salted Veggie Chips for kids who like things crunchy
• Dried Pineapple Slices for kids who like things chewy
• Chili Lime Cashews for kids who like a little spice
• Classic Granola is satiating to help tide them over
• Vegan Sweet Potato Muffins—school bake sale, anyone?
• Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds for brain-boosting dark chocolate

Here’s to a great school week or work week full of healthy, prepped foods and brain-boosting snacks. We hope this guide to sustainable meal prep has given you lots of good ideas to go with.

For related reads, check out our tips for a more minimalist lifestyle, sustainable protein sources, and sustainability on a budget.