Sonic Chips

Frito-Lay is making more noise than it would like with its newly biodegradable bag of solar-baked chips, reports Suzanne Vranica in the Wall Street Journal (8/19/10). Frito might have expected nothing but praise for its new bag design for its Sun Chips brand (commercial). After all, the estimated life-span of a traditional snack-chip bag, which is made of "polymers such as polyproylene and polyethylene," could be as long as 100 years.

But the new Sun Chips bag, which was introduced in January, is made of polylactic acid, "which fully decomposes in about 14 weeks when placed in a hot, active, compost pile." The only problem with this is that the new bag is really, really noisy. It is so noisy that J. Scot Heathman, an Air Force pilot, tested its loudness using a RadioShack sound meter. He squeezed the bag and recorded it at 95 decibels (video). That compares to 77 decibels for an environmentally-unfriendly bag.

Indeed, Frito’s new bag is so noisy that there’s even a Facebook group called, "Sorry But I Can’t Hear You Over This Sun Chips Bag," with more than 30,000 fans. The real issue is that the noisy bag may be hurting Sun Chips sales, which have been in decline since its introduction. But Frito is not backing off, and is now posting at-shelf signs reading, "Yes, the bag is loud, that’s what change sounds like." However, a Frito engineer admits he’s working on developing a quieter, crunch-free, biodegradable chips bag.