How no-waste is the no-waste lunch?

Apropos of nothing except the frustration of non-stop housework, I was wondering: How no-waste is the no-waste lunch, really? How does the production, transportation and disposal of 100 plastic ziplock sandwich bags compare in energy and resource consumption to the production, transportation, washing, replacement and ultimate disposal of our many metal, plastic, fabric and glass reusable containers?

Between me and the 2 boys, I make and pack 8 lunches and about a dozen snacks a week for consumption outside our home. Each lunch or snack averages 5 reusable containers, including beverage containers. So, let's see, that's about 100 container-uses over a 7 day period. But we don't have 100 containers, we only have about fifteen. So every day (2 days at most), we have to run them through the dishwasher or hand-wash and dry them. And the cloth napkins and lunchboxes also need to be cleaned, either by hand or in the laundry. And on the odd day that it's NOT a full laundry load or dishwasher load, that seems wasteful as well.

And as I'm making the no-waste lunch, I find myself challenged -- am I really limiting waste all together, or am I just limiting the amount of waste the school has to cope with? We buy almost nothing in bulk. We don't have a Costco membership, and we don't bake our own crackers or cookies or bread. I buy sliced cheese but not individually wrapped, but virtually everything else comes in a package for freshness. So I get the lunchboxes and containers, open the foods -- and put the resulting cheese stick sleeves, yogurt containers, granola bar wrappers, apple cores, etc. in our own garbage.

I'm not saying it's not important. I'm just saying that I don't feel as rabidly anti-wrappers as it seems I'm meant to. Especially when almost nothing is available for convenient purchase or preparation or lasting freshness except stuff in a whole lot of packaging.

I'd bake treats at home only our oven isn't safe, and I'd work on getting that fixed, only I have to get back and wash out all our reusable containers in time for the boys to bring their no-waste lunch to school tomorrow.