SunChips is back in the game! Today it announced the release of a quieter 100% compostable SunChips bag. After six months of testing, the company’s research team says that by using a different adhesive, it has been able to significantly reduce the noise of the bag.
As before, the next-generation bag is still made from a renewable, plant-based material called PLA, or polylactic acid, and the company says it continues to be 100% compostable when placed in a hot, active compost bin. (I’m still waiting for mine to decompose, but that’s a different issue.)
On its Facebook page, SunChips posted:
You asked for a quieter bag and we heard you loud and clear. Original SunChips snacks now come in a new compostable bag that’s twice as quiet as our last one. . . [O]ur new bags are rolling out in stores as we speak so grab one soon and tell us what you think. We’re listening!
As of 5:54 PM, the post had 1,026 likes and 253 comments, some from people who had stopped purchasing SunChips because of the noise and were relieved to “be able to purchase them again,” but many more from people who didn’t seem to care how loud the bag was to begin with. Wrote one:
You shouldn’t need a quieter bag. The Earth is way more important than quiet snacking. Use a bowl, people!
How did the company fix the problem? According to an AP report this morning, SunChips credits a new layer of adhesive between the printed and performance layers of the packaging, adhesive that is more like rubber and actually acts as a sound barrier.
The company’s first design gave off noise that registered at roughly 80 to 85 decibels. As reported by AP, the new design dampens the noise to around 70 decibels, “on par with its original packaging and most other chip bags.”
As a blogger who covered the first-generation SunChips compostable bag, SunChips offered to send me samples of both old and new generation bags to see the significant noise differences in the new rollout firsthand. I was all over that!
SunChips, please send cheddar!
(They can’t, actually, because they have only rolled out the new bag in the original version. So tweet away, everyone! The more positive reactions from SunChips eaters, the sooner the company will roll out the new compostable bag to other flavors.)
Now all they have to do is get the SUGAR out of them, and they MIGHT be eco-friendly! http://www.foxriverfoods.com/cfm/prodinfo.cfm?itemnumber=128697