The Best Non-Toxic Food Storage Containers, Lids Included

How many of the containers in your fridge right now have a little recycling triangle on the bottom?

For most of us, it’s most of them. And the swap away from plastic has fine print nobody puts on the box. Plenty of glass sets come with plastic lids. The best-known silicone bag belongs to the company that makes Ziploc. If you want the short version, Weck is the one we’d start with, six glass jars with glass lids for $25, and Glasslock is the one we’d buy for a full leftovers set at $49.99.

We went brand by brand through what each container is made of, what the lid is made of, what testing the brand will actually show you, and who owns the company. That last one turned up a pattern we didn’t expect.

Here’s how we picked:

• The material, in the brand’s own words. Glass, steel grade, silicone type, wax. Where a brand doesn’t say, the entry says so.
• The lid gets the same scrutiny as the container. It’s where most of the plastic in a “plastic-free” set is hiding, and it’s the part that goes in the microwave by accident.
• Price from the brand’s own storefront, at the regular one-time price, checked October 22, 2026.
• Ownership named. All six of these have a corporate parent or an investor behind them. We looked hard for an independent brand that cleared the bar, and the closest ones use a lower grade of steel or don’t sell in the US.

Our picks at a glance

• Best overall: Weck
• Best value set: Glasslock
• Best unbreakable set: U-Konserve
• Best for the freezer: Stasher
• Best plastic wrap swap: Bee’s Wrap
• Best for kids: PlanetBox

Brand	Start with	Price	Container	Lid	Ownership
Weck	742 Mold Jar, 1/2 liter, set of six	$25.00	Glass	Glass, natural rubber ring, metal clamps	Aurelius, a private equity firm, since 2024
Glasslock	20-piece Oven Safe Box Set	$49.99	Tempered glass	Polypropylene with a silicone gasket	SGC Group, South Korea
U-Konserve	Square Nesting Trio	$59.99	304 stainless steel	Platinum silicone	O2C Brands
Stasher	Sandwich bag	$13.99	Platinum silicone	Silicone, built in	SC Johnson, since 2019
Bee’s Wrap	Assorted 3 Pack	$19.99	Organic cotton, beeswax, plant oil, tree resin	None needed	Champlain Capital, since 2021
PlanetBox	Launch lunch box set	$59.95	18/8 and 18/0 stainless steel	18/0 stainless steel	Lifetime Brands, since 2018

Prices checked on each brand’s own storefront on October 22, 2026, at the regular price. Where a brand sells several sizes, the table names the one we’d start with.

Weck: glass jars with glass lids, and nothing plastic

Best for: leftovers, soups and pantry goods, with zero plastic touching the food | Price: around $25 for six | Start with: 742 Mold Jar, 1/2 liter, set of six, $25 | Ownership: owned by Aurelius, a private equity firm, since 2024

The jar is glass. So is the lid. A natural rubber ring sits between them and two metal clamps hold it shut, which means there’s no plastic anywhere in the food path, and that’s rarer in this category than it should be.

The 742 Mold Jar is a wide, tapered half-liter jar that’s good for leftovers and easy to scrape clean, at $25 for a set of six through Weck’s sole importer for the US and Canada. The jars are made in Germany.

Two things to know. Weck doesn’t state its glass type, and retailers list it as soda-lime, which is the kind that cracks on sudden temperature changes, so let a jar warm up before it goes anywhere hot. And the company changed hands: J. Weck filed for insolvency in 2023 and was bought by Aurelius, a private equity firm, at the start of 2024.

Skip it if: you want something to throw in a lunch bag. It’s glass with clip-on clamps, built for the fridge and pantry rather than the commute.

Glasslock: the most containers for the money

Best for: a whole kitchen of leftovers on a budget | Price: around $50 | Start with: 20-piece Oven Safe Box Set, $49.99 | Ownership: owned by SGC Solution, part of South Korea’s SGC Group

Ten glass containers and ten lids for $49.99. That works out to about five dollars a container, which is hard to beat for tempered glass. It was showing out of stock when we checked on October 22, so it may take a restock.

Glasslock is upfront about the materials. Its own explainer says the containers are tempered glass made from silica, soda ash and limestone, aka soda-lime glass, though it doesn’t use that word. The lids are polypropylene with silicone gaskets, and everything is made and assembled in South Korea. The brand belongs to SGC Solution, formerly Samkwang Glass, part of the SGC Group.

Now the lid, because it’s the whole reason this isn’t our top pick. Polypropylene is one of the more stable plastics, and it’s still plastic. Keep it out of the microwave and off the bottom rack of the dishwasher, and the glass does the rest.

Skip it if: the point of switching was getting every bit of plastic out of the kitchen.

U-Konserve: steel and silicone, with no plastic anywhere

Best for: families who’ve broken one glass container too many | Price: around $60 | Start with: Square Nesting Trio, $59.99 | Ownership: owned by O2C Brands

Steel doesn’t shatter on a tile floor. That’s most of the pitch, and it’s a good one.

The Square Nesting Trio is three containers of 15, 30 and 50 ounces in 304 stainless, which is 18/8, with lids in platinum silicone, the cleaner-curing kind. The brand says the set is free of BPA, BPS, phthalates and lead, and rates the containers, not the lids, oven-safe to 300°F. The regular price is $59.99, and it’s often on sale.

What’s missing is paperwork. We couldn’t find a test report, and the brand’s FAQ page returned an error when we checked. Ownership has moved twice: EcoVessel bought U-Konserve in 2020, and it’s now one of the brands under O2C Brands.

Skip it if: you like seeing what’s in the fridge without opening everything. Steel isn’t see-through, and it can’t go in the microwave.

Stasher: silicone bags from the company behind Ziploc

Best for: freezer storage and snacks, replacing zip-top bags one for one | Price: around $14 a bag | Start with: Sandwich bag, $13.99 | Ownership: owned by SC Johnson since 2019

This one’s a little awkward. The best-known reusable bag in America is owned by SC Johnson, the company that makes Ziploc, and has been since December 2019.

The bags themselves hold up. They’re platinum silicone, and the brand says they contain no BPA, BPS, lead, latex or phthalates. Its FAQ says they’ve been deemed safe for food use by the FDA and meet EU food safety standards. They’re made in China. A single Sandwich bag is $13.99 at regular price, and the 10-piece Starter Kit is $99.99.

What we didn’t find is a third-party test report, or an LFGB claim, which is what silicone buyers tend to look for. Silicone is at its best cold, in the fridge and freezer. Heat and fatty food are where it gets more complicated, and we break down why here.

Skip it if: buying from Ziploc’s parent defeats the purpose for you.

Bee’s Wrap: a plastic wrap swap, with real limits

Best for: cheese, bread and the half-lemon in the door | Price: around $20 for three | Start with: Assorted 3 Pack, $19.99 | Certifications: B Corp | Ownership: owned by Champlain Capital since 2021

Bee’s Wrap is the brand that put beeswax wraps on the map, and it’s still made in Vermont. We confirmed its B Corp status in B Lab’s directory this week: certified since 2019, with a score of 96.

The wraps are cotton coated in beeswax, organic plant oil and tree resin, and the warmth of your hands molds them around a bowl or a block of cheese. The brand says the cotton is GOTS certified organic. That certificate would belong to the mill rather than the finished wrap, and Bee’s Wrap doesn’t name its mill, so that part rests on the brand’s word. The Assorted 3 Pack is $19.99 for a small, medium and large.

Now the limits, which nobody prints on the box. No raw meat or fish. Nothing hot. And the tack fades well before the year most wrap brands promise. Ownership changed in February 2021, when the company was sold to Champlain Capital, a private investment firm.

Skip it if: you need to cover raw meat or anything warm.

PlanetBox: a steel lunch box with no coatings

Best for: kids’ lunches that come home in one piece | Price: around $60 | Start with: Launch lunch box set, $59.95 | Ownership: owned by Lifetime Brands since 2018

The Launch set is a divided stainless lunch box with a magnet set and a tall dipper for sauces, at $59.95. That’s a lot for a lunch box, and the case for it is simple: steel doesn’t crack the way plastic bento boxes do.

PlanetBox is specific about the steel, which we appreciate. Its FAQ says the boxes use 18/8 and 18/0 stainless with no coatings, the lids are 18/0, and the silicone is LFGB approved. It also says products are tested by third-party labs accepted by the CPSC, though no report is linked.

Ownership takes a minute to trace. Filament, the parent of Taylor, bought PlanetBox in December 2017, and Lifetime Brands, a public kitchenware company, bought Taylor the next year. Lifetime Brands has had a few Prop 65 notices since 2023 over lead in mugs and a plasticizer in shakers. None of them involve PlanetBox.

Skip it if: you want to heat lunch in the box. Steel stays out of the microwave.

What to avoid in food storage

Most of the risk in a food container isn’t in the material you’d guess. It’s in the claims, the lid and the heat.

“BPA-free” is the first one. It tells you one chemical is absent and says nothing about the replacement, which often tests about as hormonally active in the lab. Here’s how that swap played out. The number in the recycling triangle tells you the actual resin, and our guide to those numbers explains which ones to keep away from food.

Heat is the big one. A 2023 study found microwaving some plastic containers released millions of microplastics per square centimeter in three minutes. Even a glass container can put plastic in your food if its lid is in the microwave with it. Take the lid off and cover the dish with a plate.

Watch out for “bamboo fiber” containers too. They’re bamboo powder mixed into melamine plastic, and an EU crackdown found items releasing formaldehyde far above the legal limit. We cover that in our cutting board explainer.

Then there’s “food-grade” and “FDA approved.” Neither means what it sounds like. The FDA doesn’t approve finished containers, and “food-grade” has no legal definition in US food-contact rules. What those labels really promise is worth five minutes before you pay extra for one.

And skip decorated glass for storage. Lead turns up in painted rims and enamel, not in plain clear glass. For silicone, cold use is the easy case; how silicone holds up when it’s hot is a longer story.

What we left off, and why

Caraway’s food storage set came closest to making it and fell off for two reasons. It’s borosilicate glass with a ceramic coating, which adds a layer that plain glass doesn’t need, at $225 for the 12-piece set, and the page doesn’t say what the lids or gaskets are made of. Its marketing has had trouble too. In August 2025 the ad industry’s review body told Caraway to stop calling competitors’ cookware toxic, and in February 2026 Groupe SEB and Meyer sued over the same ads.

Pyrex was bought by Centre Lane Partners, a private equity firm, in the 2023 Instant Brands bankruptcy sale. Its storefront blocked us, so we couldn’t confirm the glass type or lid material, and we won’t list what we can’t check.

ECOlunchbox is woman-owned and we wanted it here. But its core steel bentos use 201 stainless, a lower grade than the 304 everyone else on this list uses. Only its Blue Water Bento line is 304.

(re)zip bags are PEVA, which is a plastic, while some of the brand’s own copy says “no plastic.” LunchBots shares a parent with U-Konserve and doesn’t state its lid material. Elephant Box is a lovely UK steel brand that doesn’t sell in US dollars, and W&P’s store was offline when we checked.

How to actually choose one

Start with where the container goes after the fridge.

If it goes in the microwave, it should be glass, and the lid comes off first. Weck if you want no plastic at all, Glasslock if you want a full set without spending much. If it goes in a backpack, steel makes more sense: U-Konserve for adults, PlanetBox for kids. If it goes in the freezer flat, Stasher. And if you’re mostly replacing plastic wrap on cheese and bread, Bee’s Wrap does that well, as long as you keep it away from raw meat.

Then use what you already have. A plastic container you already own and keep away from heat is a better bet than a new glass one that sends the old ones to landfill. Replace the plastic as it cracks, warps or stains, and replace it with something on this list.

Frequently asked questions

Which food storage material is safest?

Plain, clear glass. A 2026 review of 69 studies found glass had the lowest rate of exceeding metal migration limits, at 5.6%, against 11% for stainless steel and 12.5% for plastics. Stainless is a close second for cold and dry food, and silicone is fine for cold and frozen storage.

Are glass containers with plastic lids safe?

The glass is, and the lid is fine if you keep it away from heat. Most lids are polypropylene, and heat is what drives plastic to shed particles. Take the lid off before microwaving, and hand-wash it or use the top rack of the dishwasher.

Do silicone food bags leach chemicals?

Silicone can release siloxanes, mostly when it’s hot, in contact with fatty food, and new. In cold use, FDA researchers found no siloxanes in milk after six hours on silicone at body temperature. For freezer and fridge storage, silicone bags are a solid choice.

Can beeswax wraps touch raw meat?

No. Beeswax wraps can’t be washed in hot water, so they can’t be sanitized after raw meat or fish. Use them for cheese, bread, produce and covering bowls, and keep raw proteins in glass or steel.

Is stainless steel safe for storing tomato sauce?

For short-term storage it’s fine, but acid is what pulls nickel and chromium out of steel, mostly from new steel. If you have a nickel allergy or plan to keep acidic leftovers for days, glass is the better choice.

Can you freeze glass food containers?

Yes, if you leave headspace for the food to expand and avoid sudden temperature changes. Don’t move a container straight from the freezer into a hot oven. Most glass storage is soda-lime glass, which handles sudden temperature swings much less well than borosilicate.

Related reading

The three explainers we wrote alongside this list: glass vs stainless vs silicone food storage, what “food-grade” actually means, and whether plastic cutting boards shed microplastics. We’ve also covered microplastics from kitchen plastics, zero-waste kitchen swaps, is stainless steel safe and non-toxic cookware.