But the reason why Frito-Lay is pulling the bag is the funniest thing you’ll read today: it’s too noisy:
Frito-Lay is preparing to quietly sack its “green” but noisy SunChips bag.
Roughly 18 months after Frito-Lay, with great fanfare, launched a biodegradable SunChips bag made from plant material that was billed as 100% compostable, the company is yanking the noisy material from the packages of five of six SunChips flavors immediately.
The company is returning them to their former bags that can’t be recycled — but won’t wake the neighbors — while it works frantically to come up with a new, quieter eco-friendly bag.
The noise of the bag — due to an unusual molecular structure that makes the bag more rigid — has been compared to everything from lawnmowers to jet engines. There’s even an active Facebook group with more than 44,000 friends that goes by the name of “Sorry But I Can’t Hear You Over This SunChips Bag.”
“Clearly, we’d received consumer feedback that it was noisy,” says Aurora Gonzalez, a Frito-Lay spokeswoman. “We recognized from the beginning that the bag felt, looked and sounded different.”
The larger lesson: If Americans can’t tolerate a noisy bag of tasty treats, does Al Gore and Co. really think we’ll tolerate a gazillion wind turbines dotting the countryside?