A news release recently distributed by the Regional Municipality in Niagara, Ontario certainly doesn’t promote or support Frito-Lay’s 100% compostable position. The Regional Municipality will not accept the SunChips bags in their Green Bin program as the film takes too long to degrade in the community’s composting plant. “The Sun Chips bags are made of polylactic acid, which is a corn starch-based product similar to that which is used in the compostable liner bags that are accepted in the Region’s organics program. Both products compost under the right conditions, however, the Sun Chips bags have three layers of and compost in about 14 weeks, while the bin liner bags are a single layer and break down in three to four weeks,” Andrew Pollock, director of waste management services, commented in their news release.
Makes one wonder if Frito-Lay considered and reviewed all avenues in order to justify and substantiate compostability claims on their packaging? Sterling Anthony raises a good point in his case, how much effort are consumers willing to take just to dispose of a single chip bag through composting? Will consumers actually collect all of their SunChips bags and plan specific trips to an industrial composting site especially when very few are in operation or accessible to the general public?
Compostable packaging is intended for composting environments in which they break down into CO2, water and biomass and companies must factor in the natural habits of consumers and how they dispose of their waste. As a society, we generally take the path of least resistance and composting a SunChips bag is an impractical task. Chip bags typically end up in one of two main disposal routes: landfills and in some cases outdoor litter. If compostable products end up in a landfill, in the presence of water and absence of oxygen, it will biodegrade anaerobically to produce methane and carbon dioxide. Both are greenhouse gases but methane is over 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Methane is also highly combustible and is a frequent cause of explosions.Compostable products such as the SunChips bag which are made out of PLA do not fully biodegrade in outdoor environments which further contributes to our litter problem. Wouldn’t a photodegradable bag be more beneficial if the SunChips bag was littered? Additionally, if compostable products end up being collected and processed within a recycling facility, recycling operators run the risk of compostable products contaminating their plastics recycling.
All things considered, Frito-Lay made a poor choice by “betting all their chips” and introducing the compostable SunChips bag.
