The LunchTrox
The LunchTrox is a concept developed by the Project Reflect Lab. The LunchTrox aims to transform how school food is experienced by giving participants - students, caregivers, and school communities - the resources necessary to enact systemic shifts. We approach school meals as a daily, joyful opportunity for connection and learning.
The LunchTrox will reconstruct the narrative and experience of school meals via a simple and ubiquitous medium - the lunchbox. But, it's not just a lunchbox. It's a lunchbox that also turns into a tray. Through thoughtful design and the creation of engaging content, we seek to create a powerful sense of belonging at the cafeteria table that will shift how students approach learning, community building, and creativity now and throughout their lives.
Why a lunch box?
The Project Reflect LunchTrox is beautifully designed to draw attention and conversation to the school food experience. When light hits the metal lunch box, color is reflected into the space, providing students with the opportunity to “paint” their cafeteria in a kaleidoscope of colors on a daily basis. The vibrant colors of the boxes are inspired by the foods of the world and the box will be accompanied by a digital and print library of thought-provoking resources to support learning, advocacy, and conversation around the lunch table. Students will learn about the joy of a shared meal - where thoughts and ideas are exchanged and explored. In order to create an inclusive experience, the box is designed to unfold into a cafeteria tray, allowing all students - regardless of if they bring food from home or go through the line - to participate in the experience, while also reducing landfill waste caused by disposable trays. We aim to make school lunch a joyful and engaging part of the school day and to seed habits/actions that will go well beyond the school walls.
Impact beyond the box
Transforming into a tray - Every day, over 30 million children participate in the school meal experience across the United States. Many students receive their meals on disposable styrofoam and cardboard trays due to lack of infrastructure within schools for cleaning reusable trays. For example, San Francisco Unified School District provides over 37,000 meals a day to students, all of which are served on disposable trays. This equates to over 6.6 million trays a year that are disposed of. Disposable trays from school meals create large amounts of landfill waste, which would be mitigated by the design of the LunchTrox. Inspired by the intricate folds of origami, the design of the LunchTrox will allow for it to flatten into a tray when opened, in order to provide a sturdy, reusable tray for students who participate in the school meal program.
Equity in the cafeteria - Due to its innovative design, all students are invited to use the LunchTrox either as a vessel for food from home or as a tray for the lunchline. In addition, we seek to challenge the idea that students who participate in school meals can’t take food home. Often, schools require students who go through the line to throw away leftover food or place it on a shared table. What if they could fold their tray into a lunchbox and take the food home, like a student who brought their lunch? We are leveraging creative design to remove unnecessary inequities in the cafeteria and to increase the likelihood of a student participating in the school meal program.
Joy - We believe in joy at Project Reflect. Joy, as defined by the Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, “involves a state of positive affect, in which one experiences feelings of freedom, safety, and ease.” Imagine a joyful school food experience and what that can mean for the wellbeing of our children, their academic outcomes, and their sense of belonging. With our lunchbox, learning experiences, and rituals, we are excited to provide students with pathways to joy. Joy is what Project Reflect seeks to provide for all children.