SunChips bags are sooo loud, but do they break down?
Published 10:32 am Thursday, August 19, 2010
Yes.
That incredibly loud SunChips bag — you know the one that hurts your ears every time you open it? — is 100 percent compostable.
Cedar Grove Composting in Everett tested the bag and found out it completely disappears in its commercial compost heaps within 2 months.
Frito-Lay also says the bag breaks down in the average backyard compost pile in 3 months. (I haven’t tried it, but I believe it.)
Why?
It’s made of somewhat controversial corn-based plastic, like many other types of compostable packaging.
Unlike many other types of packaging, however, Frito-Lay’s SunChips bag has a Facebook page: “SORRY BUT I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THIS SUN CHIPS BAG.”
Even the folks at Gizmodo have noticed the sensational snack technology: This guy, compares the noise level in decibles to a Tostitos bag, which is also pretty loud.
Note: He VERY WRONGLY states that the bag will break down in a landfill, too, in 3 months. It will not. Things can decompose in landfills, but it can take months or even decades, even in Eastern Washington’s high-tech, methane-harvesting Roosevelt Regional Landfill and powerplant.
In short, the anaerobic decomposition that happens in a tightly sealed landfill, which is to say airless decomposition, is not the same as composting or regular decomposition, which occurs in nature with the help of air and water.
Here’s the other thing to remember: Not all supposedly compostable packaging is as quickly biodegradable as the SunChips bag.
In six years of testing Cedar Grove has found only 700 items out of 1,600 submitted by manufacturers break down fast enough to be practical for composting at Cedar Grove, one of the largest and most technologically advanced facilities of its kind.
What should you do?
Read my extensive Q-and-A guide (right next to the main story) to navigating this complex brave new world of compostable packaging.
Let me know if you have any questions.
As the headline says, it’s complicated.
