Tribe, this post updated to cover back to school amidst COVID-19, the original post and list of eco-friendly back to school essentials are followed below.

Sustainable back to school during COVID-19

At the end of last school year, when the novel coronavirus pandemic broke out globally, our kids completed their school year via distance learning. Schools were quickest to react and respond to the pandemic and exhibited their best efforts, but our kids not necessarily enjoyed remote learning. Researches around the world on recent remote learning situations concluded that student’s learning and education progress during this time was lower than the usual case. And if we continue the distance learning, not just individual students but society as a whole will face negative consequences. For further reading, here is the report from Mckinsey.

The schools are following local government protocols and health and safety measures for safe reopening. UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, and World Bank have also issued new guidelines on the safe reopening of schools worth checking for parents who are worried. However, as parents what we can do is follow the school instructions and educate our kids about this new normal. It’s essential to teach our kids how they should protect themselves through social distancing, proper hand hygiene as well as not to stigmatize peers and tease about being sick. Of course, as parents, it’s our responsibility to check our kid’s health daily and send them to school only when they are healthy.  Supporting our child’s mental health is again very essential during these times. Here are further guidelines for parent’s issues by WHO, which I highly recommend.

Our kids need to wear face mask throughout the school time, better to provide them spare masks as well. I personally will recommend a reusable cotton mask with 3 plies as WHO recommendations, however, we will have to follow school instructions. The additional supplies will be hand sanitizers and their own stationery as kids won’t be sharing stationary with their classmates anymore.

Tribe, you might have spent a lazy summer holiday in UAE or might have traveled far but I am sure what is common with all of us, running for the last minute shopping for school supplies! The new school year is starting soon and I urge you this time, choose the school supplies which can make your kid’s school years more sustainable and eco-friendly.  Here we are bringing our recommendation for sustainable school essentials for our Sustainability Tribe!

Don’t we all want to give the best of the things to our kids? A general mentality of any parent, right? But then when it comes to selecting a lunchbox or water bottles, why so many parents choose cute looking but toxic- plastic options? If the food, drinks, or even water stay longer in plastic containers, plastic leaches in the food. So can you imagine how harmful it can be to use those colorful cute looking plastic lunchboxes and water bottles for developing brains?

So not just for our planet Earth but for the health of your child, it’s better to choose nontoxic, eco-friendly essentials.

Now for all those flag bearers of BPA-free plastic items, please always keep this in mind that almost all plastics are not recyclable after a few times and then they end up in a landfill at some point; contaminating our land and water in the end. Plus BPA-free items need to be replaced more often than below mentioned eco-friendly items because of wear and tear and therefore they are not really cheaper than our recommended long-lasting items.

Go ahead and have a look at our plastic-free, chemical-free list of school essentials and start your kid’s new school year sustainably.

Our favorite brands are Bento boxes by Lunchbots, U Konserve. You can easily find these brands in UAE at places like Virgine Megastore, Jashnmal, Mumzworld. Once you buy a non-toxic stainless steel lunch box, feel relaxed that you not packing any toxins for your kid’s lunch along with food.

(The glass lunchboxes are nontoxic too and are microwaveable as well, but we will not recommend them for kids for safety reasons, what if the glass box breaks in school by falling, plus they are heavier)

There are many great glass bottle options like Lifefactory they are great for grown-ups but I will only recommend a stainless steel water bottle for kids for health and safety purposes. If you want to fill up only pure drinking water minus any toxins then stainless steel water bottle is the only option. The water stored inside doesn’t get any smell even after a few days, no toxins leaching in the water!

Our favorite brand is Ecovessel. The Eco Vessel bottles are so trendy that even older kids and even adults can use them. I selected such a design that even I can take it with me if I need to.

Now when it comes to drinking water, UAE is one of the top plastic bottle consuming countries. Even though the municipality water is drinkable after a domestic filtration system, many people still buy drinking water in plastic bottles. Read here how can you say no to any kind of plastic bottle and start drinking the local water. Remember it is important to remove the toxins in the water at the source not just from your kid’s school bag.

For younger kids, it’s important to choose non-toxic paints.  ‘We can too’ are great plant-based crayons, read our review of ‘we can too’ and other kids safe colors. Eco-crayons by eco-kids is another option of non-toxic crayons.

Natural Earth Paint kit is great for little painters. The colors come in powder form and you need to add little water to make it. These paints are made of naturally colored clay transformed into pigment through a simple process of drying, crushing, and sifting. Veggie sculpting dough by ‘We Can Too‘ is also a great non-toxic option of play dough for young ones. The playdough by We Can Too is made purely out of plant-based, organic food ingredients. I could smell turmeric when playing with yellow playdough!

There are many interesting and upcoming brands of recycled or plantable pencils, you can find them on Kidore.com. Treewise pencils from Ajman are another place to find pencils made from 100% recycled newspaper instead of wood. Muji is another great place to find recycled paper notebooks, notepads, and some eco-friendly stationery items.

But most important of all, teach your kids to use both sides of papers from early on. Ask them to recycle the papers.

I keep all papers with blank sides in a tray at our home for my son to use it for writing, paintings, or doing any exercise.

As parents, our job is not done just providing eco-friendly & healthy essentials to our kids, we all need to start making small changes to make our lifestyle more healthy and sustainable.

Start your eco-lifestyle here if you haven’t yet. Here are some great & simple tips for making your home non-toxic.

And don’t forget to join our tribe here!