This week, Grist Magazine reported that Frito Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, will continue selling its popular SunChips snack product in compostable bags in Canada. The product was discontinued earlier this year in the United States because of consumer complaints that it is too noisy.
The switch back to petroleum-based landfill fodder ended one of the least successful attempts at green marketing in US corporate history. It is sad to see a company try to do something green, that costs nothing extra, and face consumer backlash all the same – just because it makes “it hard to eat the chips and watch TV” simultaneously. If this is a barrier, how long before we get a climate change deal?
At least their Canadian partners have been more persistent, and have launched a public education campaign on composting the product, complete with earplugs. It is nice to see the company creatively marketing the product. Public Radio noted at the time of the product’s original release, that without a broad public awareness campaign, most consumers will probably continue to chuck the bags in the garbage. Unfortunately, there are only 138 industrial scale compost sites across the United States.
Here at the Green Action Centre, many of us were excited to hear about the product when it was first released. We only wish that Winnipeg and other Manitoba municipalities offered the facilities to compost them properly.
Thanks a lot for that extremely cool post.
We have been testing a number of the “compostable” products in our compost bin at work. We left them for 1 year and unfortunately neither the cuttlery, clear glasses or take-out packages composted for us. The take-home message for me – is to encourage people to use re-usable rather than “compostable” items where-ever possible. This is what we are doing at our church where we serve Just Us fair Trade coffee. We have a compost bin there too – and although Just Us provides “compostable” cups, we are instead using ceramic or travel mugs. Whether compostable or not – a single use product just doesn’t seem very green to me!
Interesting comments. As far as the noise of the bags, pour the chips into a bowl.
One problem as I see it from a community composters point of view, how do we (the operators) tell the difference between a composting bag and non-composting bag? I’m not going to be able to spend a lot of time (read any time) sorting which bag is which, I’m just going to ban them all.
People need to think beyond ‘backyard’ composting. Backyard composting is really self- indulgent. What we need is to build a thriving composting industry to replace our agricultural industries reliance on chemical fertilizers and potash.If you are concerned about food security and food cost inflation for future generations we should all be looking at what is happening with chemical fertilizers and potash. The ONLY way to avoid a major food security crisis is to start creating a thriving, solid, compost industry. Rome was not built in a day and neither will a composting industry if we keep throwing the baby out with the bath water. recycling was not a success over night (and is still not a success). But it plays right into the hands of the thriving petro-chemical companies and their plastic manufacturers. Something like this comes along and it gets slammed…this plays right into the hands of the plastic and petro industry…
I’m not sure if “self-indulgent” is the phrase you meant to use here but it’s not one I would use to describe backyard composting. Dealing with waste on-site (as in, for example, backyard composting) is generally the most efficient as it requires zero transportation costs.
Other options should be made available to the public but I would include backyard composting as an effective component of a comprehensive waste diversion policy.
I don’t understand? What special facilities are required for this product? I thought I could just put it in rotation with my compost.
As Kate’s post below shows, the bags are designed to compost at temperatures between 125 and 135 degrees f (that is about 55 degress C). In Winnipeg, one needs a pretty big, well maintained pile to get that temperature. If you try putting it in your bin, let us know how that works for you. It will be interesting to see how well they decompose in backyard bins here in Manitoba.
Hey! It’s Jane and Lauren from dinner the other night! We had the eating chips and watching tv problem a couple days ago but it was fun to try and reach into the bag without making it crunch! 🙂 I am defiantly going to start looking for the bags with complimentary earplugs!
Great article! Sunchips did make a significant effort to ensure the compostability of these bags in backyard bins as you can see here: http://www.jgpress.com/archives/_free/002143.html. Of course the backyard pile still does need to get pretty hot which can be tricky in Winnipeg!
I will try composting them in my bin this year and see what happens. It will be at least several months before I have anything to report. It will not be 50+ degrees anywhere in my backyard anytime soon.