Trashing the Biodegradable Sun Chips bag

If you haven't heard the news about the Sun Chips bags, that may be because you haven't heard much of anything since you last opened one.  They were, of course, the biodegradable packaging brainchild of snack-maker Frito-Lay.  The deal was that the whole bag was compostable - meaning it was made out of plant material that would break down over a few months.  This is in contrast to other snack food bags, and all plastic bags in general, that are petroleum-based and take anywhere from 500-1000 years to degrade, so the scientists tell us.

Now let's shoot straight here - ultimately this was nothing more than a sales gimmick.  It worked on my family.  I mean, we've always liked Sun Chips, but we bought more of them when they made the bag change.  The fact that they restricted the use of this bag to the Sun Chips product - the supposedly more natural/healthy option in their snack food arsenal (yes, you may snicker here) - seemed to prove this point.

Nevertheless, they did in fact do what they claimed to do - as the compost in my backyard has become the final resting place for many a Sun Chips bag, where they wind up looking much like the picture to the right.  So regardless of their motives, it was nevertheless a bold move and at least indicated that a company-for-profit might actually be growing a conscience; might just be thinking about something other than the bottom line.

Might.

That changed this past week, when Frito-Lay trashed the biodegradable bag option - all because consumers complained that they were too noisy.

And make no mistake - they certainly were.  Freakishly noisy.  I mean, plastic snack bags will never be described as "quiet."  They have to be made out of a crisper plastic to keep moisture out, lest your Cheetos or chips become soggy, which would be a travesty.  But these bags - my gosh, you could tell when your neighbor across the street was taking them out of their pantry.  No snack-sneaking here, folks!  One study showed that they elicited 100 decibels of bag-crinkling noise, compared to the sound of a lawnmower (90) and a New York subway (94).  Facebook groups popped up, like: Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This Sun Chips Bag and The 100% Compostable Sun Chips Bag Is 110% Annoying (the latter demonstrating that creating a Facebook group doesn't mean you have to be good at math). 

So yes, they were noisy. Loud. Obnoxiously so.

But here's the thing: is loudness really a legit reason to ditch a decent sustainability initiative? Do we really want to include that among the excuses we've concocted for avoiding the more environmental-friendly option - a list that already has:

• "It's too expensive" (cities like mine refusing to offer curbside recycling, people not switching to greener technology in general).
• "It's not convenient" (not hauling recycling to a center when the city won't do it).
• "Our economy will always be oil-based, so why change" (not driving hybrid or electric vehicles).
• "It's too much of a hassle and I don't have time for it" (not growing food in your own garden or setting up a recycling station in your home).

Do we really want to add "It's too noisy" to that list??

I have this image in my head that I can't shake.  It's America fifty years from now.  That's when many studies suggest that all our landfills - those big holes in the ground we never see where all our trash goes - will be completely full.  As in, there is no room for the 4+ pounds of garbage produced by every American every day (not counting commercial and industrial waste, mind you).  Which means we will have resorted to burning it, dumping it on some third-world country, burying it deep in the ocean, or even launching it into space - all of which will wreak even more havoc on our environment.  I'm trying to imagine what they (read: our grandkids) will think when they learn that we nixed a compostable snack food bag simply because it was too noisy.  Don't you think that's going to come across as more than a bit petty?

At some point we North American consumers are going to have to accept the fact that things must change; the first being our habits and our attitude.  I'm not saying that the fate of the world rests in the balance of an obnoxiously loud Sun Chips bag.  I'm simply saying it might be a good thing to look at the big picture for a change, despite what our ears may tell us.

R.I.P., Biodegradable Sun Chips bag. You will be missed by some of us.