 Photo by Jeremy Brooks, Flickr Creative Commons |
SunChips庐 just made environmentalists and recyclers a whole lot happier. Starting next month, on Earth Day, its 10-ounce bags of the ridge-filled, rectangular snacks will be made from vegetables. No more chucking that metallic-looking, petroleum-based package in the trash. Instead, just toss it in the compost heap with your food scraps. (Click for tips on composting at home, from the Jan-Feb issue of 爆料公社.)
In a recent 爆料公社 about zero waste, we talked to some self-described 鈥渙bsessive鈥 recyclers, including 71-year-old Arthur Boone, who sorts his garbage into trash, paper, plastic, aluminum foil, metal, reusables, plastic bags, rigid plastic, and Styrofoam. The one thing he hadn鈥檛 figured out how to recycle: Mylar bags (and other similar packaging made from petroleum).
If the new SunChips bags work well, perhaps they can become a model for other companies?
Frito-Lay, the maker of SunChips, that using petroleum byproducts to make its chip bags costs a lot less and is much easier than the more eco-friendly alternatives. So why the green leap? The company says it 鈥渄reams of a world with less waste.鈥 Sounds simple enough.
The snack-maker spent four years researching and testing new materials, eventually deciding on PLA, a material made of polylactic acid. According to the SunChips web site: 鈥淧LA is made from lactic acid. Lactic acid is made from dextrose by fermentation. Dextrose is made from starch and starch is made from carbon dioxide and water. Because it鈥檚 made with plants that grow annually instead of petroleum (which takes millions of years to form) the impact on greenhouse gases is much lower.鈥
Apparently, the bags鈥攚hich are purportedly much noisier than the old bags鈥攚ill break down into gardener鈥檚 gold in three to four months. And the company鈥檚 plant in Modesto , CA