To keep a lunch you prepared for your child – or for yourself – cool until it is time to eat it, many people use an ice pack made of plastic with a gel-like substance inside that contains additives (hopefully non-toxic ones, but you never know – that blue gel stuff doesn’t exactly look healthy and natural). An ice pack can add a lot of weight to a lunch bag and uses space that could otherwise be occupied by an extra lunch item. The best way to avoid adding unnecessary plastic and weight to your lunch bag is to freeze a lunch item that is intended to be eaten. By the time it is lunch time, the frozen food will have thawed and will have maintained a cold temperature in the lunch bag, helping keep other lunch items cool. 
We recommend freezing some apple sauce in a small AR8 stainless steel container with 8 oz / 250 ml capacity. Fill about half the container with apple sauce, leaving enough space for the sauce to expand as it freezes. Leave the container in the freezer overnight. In the morning, the container and its contents will be frozen solid. Add the container to your lunch bag. We added our DIY freezer pack to our wool insulated organic cotton lunch bag, which keeps the contents cool for several hours. At lunch time, the apple sauce will be sufficiently thawed to be enjoyed as a healthy dessert.
Let us know of your own DIY inventions to avoid plastic products.
Chantal Plamondon, Co-Owner
LifeWithoutPlastic.com