Frito-Lay Trashes SunChips Bag After Biodegradable Packaging Criticized For Being Too Noisy

NEW YORK — Frito-Lay hopes to quiet complaints about its noisy SunChips bags by switching out the biodegradable bags for the old packaging on most flavors.

The company is switching back to original packaging, which is made of a type of plastic, for five of the six varieties of the chips. It will keep the biodegradable bags for its sixth variety, its original plain flavor. That's its second best-selling, after Harvest Cheddar.

The snack maker said the switch started in the middle of September and should be complete by middle to late October.

The bags were launched in April 2009 with a big marketing effort to play up their compostability because they're made from plants and not plastic.

But the technology Frito-Lay used to make the packaging results in a bag that's stiffer than the plastic packaging – and louder. Customers complained. Groups on Facebook abound with names such as "I wanted SunChips but my roommate was sleeping..." and "Nothing is louder than a SunChips bag."

Spokeswoman Aurora Gonzalez said the company received complaints about the noise from the bags, although it also received thanks from customers who liked being able to recycle them.

So the decision was made to remove the bulk of the biodegradable line.

"We need to listen to our consumers," she said. "We clearly heard their feedback."

Frito-Lay, a unit of PepsiCo Inc., based in Purchase, N.Y., is developing its next generation of biodegradable bags and will use what it learned with the SunChips effort, she said.

More and more companies are trying to develop sustainable packaging, not just to save on costs but because it's what shoppers want, said Bob Stolmeier, business development manager for Zip-Pak, who works with companies to create packaging. But there's a limit to how much shoppers will sacrifice in the name of sustainability, and apparently noise is one of the sore spots.

"There's no reason to offer solutions that the market would not accept," he said.

Comments

[MaeBayB]

09:57 PM on 10/18/2010

Finally..this bag is sooooo annoying.....kudos to Frito-Lay for listening to their customers.

[tankandtwig]

10:05 AM on 10/14/2010

Was Glenn Beck behind this bag change? Unbelievable.

[lastliberalintx]

11:57 PM on 10/11/2010

The bag is incredibly noisy but I did love how it was compostable. I would take the noise any day over plastic.

[Mirabai305]

10:55 AM on 10/09/2010

Of course, I don't know, but couldn't you pour the chips into a bowl and thereby avoid the noisy bag problem?

[mytwocents02]

06:30 PM on 10/07/2010

This is just great, Americans eating and snacking themselves to early graves and taking Mother Earth with them, too. Our children say, "Thank you very much!"

[graywolf68]

12:20 PM on 10/07/2010

So instead of redesigning the biodegradable bag to be less noisy, it's easier to go backwards to the non Eco friendly packaging.
Several months ago when my wife and I bought sunchips in the biodegradable bags, I said to her, "The bag is REALLY noisy, but what a fantastic idea!". The idea of not having packaging that hangs around forever appealed to me more than the noise.
I'm disappointed that you're backtracking Frito Lay, very disappointed.

[grumpyfarmer]

08:16 AM on 10/07/2010

Proof we are a nation of big babies. I love Sunchips, and hadn't noticed the bag was noisy until it was pointed out to me. So, I squished it, and squished another non bio bag, yes, it was louder, so what? It wasn't as loud as say, a car motor, or an explosion. But, evidently, it was just too darned loud for the American public. If little bitty sacrifices can't be made like a snack bag that is a little louder when you handle it, how on earth will this society ever make some of the really big sacrifices coming our way????

[Ohsherri]

03:31 AM on 10/07/2010

They say there's a big mass of plasic garbage floating around the ocean that is
the size of Texas. But it doesn't really bother me cause I can't hear it.

[tombartarm]

09:41 PM on 10/06/2010

OK the bag is noisy REALLY NOISY! But I still like the bag because it's biodegradable. It's also good for dieting because you can't snack on them late at night, because that bag will wake the whole neighborhood.

[Kiel]

08:25 PM on 10/06/2010

There's no reason to sacrifice for sustainability--the sacrifice we'll make by being unsustainable will more than take care of us.

[gregstevens]

08:23 PM on 10/06/2010

SunChips didn't remove the bags because of Facebook complaints. A large company never does anything because of Facebook whinging. They did it because they saw a drop in their sales over the last year, and they ASSUMED that the drop in sales was somehow related to the complaints about the bags.

Personally, I think the biodegradable bag was a scapegoat. To quote from this article:

http://green-plastics.net/discussion/53-general/105-sunchips-error-in-logic

"Let's be scientists for a moment. What is an alternative hypothesis? What other things do we know about our society, our economy, and our world that could possibly explain a decrease in (of all things) "SunChips" sales?

In a world where every day the headline is about unemployment, foreclosures, and debt, let's imagine that maybe people are spending less on expensive snack foods. Let's put forward the hypothesis that when people are broke and hurting for money, they will want to spend less on food that has absolutely no nutritional value."

The link above has an interesting table: cost per ounch of common snack foods, and SunChips is RIGHT AT THE TOP.

The sales at SunChips aren't going down because of the dang bags. The sales are going down because people are broke and unemployed, and SunChips are really expensive. Case Closed.

[prosha]

12:23 AM on 10/30/2010

It must be nice to know everything about everything. Case closed. Go join Sen Kerry in lamenting how stupid are all the rest of us.

[Stacy Gould]

05:28 PM on 10/06/2010

you must have more resolve to really change the planet one Sun Chi bag at a time. lease bring back the biodegradable bag. I will not buy anymore Sun Chips until you go back

[Marturia]

02:20 PM on 10/06/2010

This is dumb. What about the loud noise you hear when you eat the chips? Crunch, crunch, crunch!!

[sigh-ence]

02:00 PM on 10/06/2010

...For reals?

Yes, because saving the environment (one small step at a time) is less important than waking up your sleeping roommate when you get the munchies.

COME ON, PEOPLE!

[Ratdog100]

12:09 PM on 10/06/2010

Hemp bags would be a good marketing idea. Empty the bag. Smoke it. Then eat the chips when you get the munchies.

[Wendy Dreeszen Wiese]

01:33 PM on 10/06/2010

Except there isn't enough THC in hemp to get high.

[Marturia]

02:15 PM on 10/06/2010

You may be onto something there.