Okay, I just had to have some fun with the title. The Sun Chips brand of Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo, announced the following in their press release:
“This month, the SunChips brand is taking the first step towards this transformational packaging. The outer layer of packaging on 10 ½ oz size SunChips snacks bags will be made with a compostable, plant-based renewable material, polylactic acid (PLA). By Earth Day 2010, PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay North America division plans to rollout a package for its SunChips snacks where all layers are made from PLA material so the package is 100% compostable.
“We know environmentally-friendly packaging is a priority for our SunChips consumer,” said Gannon Jones, vice president, marketing, Frito-Lay North America. “Today’s launch of packaging made with 1/3 renewable materials is an important first step towards having a fully compostable chip bag in market by Earth Day 2010.”
Current snack food packaging has three layers: a printed outer layer with packaging visuals/graphics, an inner layer, which serves as a barrier to maintain the quality and integrity of the product, and a middle layer that joins the other two layers. When the packaging is 100% compostable, it will fully decompose in about 14 weeks when placed in a hot, active compost pile or bin. NatureWorks LLC is providing the PLA, which is trademarked under the Ingeo name.”
If you read the whole press release, you’ll also see how they’re going to be communicating this to retailers and people. Seems like they’re really gonna be baking the compostable bag aspect as an intrinsic part of their brand identity – from the earth, powered by wind, no product waste. I wonder though if the bag is ASTM D6400 certified? Seems like that would be plausible and no big deal.
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So here’s the thing though. While Sun Chips is doing the best they can on their own, the fact remains that 99.9% of bags will never die peacefully in a hot, active compost bin or facility. They’ll either be landfilled or in a few cases, burned. But at least in those end-of-life scenarios, they’re made of bio-based materials and I suppose that’s better than monstrous hybrids of organic/inorganic materials.
By the way, SunChips will be giving a special discussion at Sustainable Brands 09 on Tuesday June 2nd, titled Sunchip’s Sustainable Brand Journey: Thinking Outside (And About) the Bag! – Thomas Oh, Director of Marketing, Frito Lay
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