Editorial: Green chips taste better

Ridding your daily life of environmental pollutants is much less appealing than filling it with… Ridding your daily life of environmental pollutants is much less appealing than filling it with convenience, especially for Americans. Think about it —  Forbes Magazine lists the U.S. in the top 10 hardest-working countries, with the average worker logging 1,797 hours each year. Many people feel they just don’t have the time to busy themselves with green initiatives. And now apparently Americans don’t have the ears for it, either.

According to the Wall Street Journal, snack-food giant Frito-Lay announced it will scale back its revolutionary biodegradable plant-derived bag, which has packaged SunChips since April, because of the excessive sound produced by operating the bag.

Developed and heavily marketed as an environmentally friendly alternative to the traditional — and environmentally unfriendly — plastic snack bag, the biodegradable version has sparked an uproar among consumers since its introduction in January. Sales of the SunChips brand have declined each proceeding month, and crinkling might be to blame.

Now we can’t put too much blame on Frito-Lay. Sure, if the company were to pull the bag from the market altogether, that would be another thing, but that’s not what’s happening. In fact, the WSJ article reports that at least one of the six SunChips flavors will retain its eco-friendly packaging, and meanwhile engineers hired by the company will work to correct the loudness issue. Although not as lucrative as expected, the biodegradable bag’s trial run still represents a major step toward an economy that produces sustainable products — and this is the kind of innovation that deserves appreciation.

We just wish consumers would have appreciated it a bit more. It’s a question of how much people would sacrifice to make a very real dent in the United States’ pollution footprint. As long as biodegradable packaging can be accomplished cheaply, with low energy and resource costs, The Pitt News thinks consumers should automatically yearn to fill their stores with such bags and volunteer to make small sacrifices, like surcharges or even the occasional auditory annoyance.

But human beings can have silly priorities. Judging from the effusive public condemnations that the SunChips bags received, we hope that other companies don’t take the public outcry the wrong way.

Before the hype of biodegradable degrades, however, TPN would like to make an offer. In yesterday’s editorial, we asked MTV Networks to redirect the $10,000 reward it’s currently offering to the innovator who can design a simpler federal loan application. Today, we’ve found a more worthy direction for that money: Let’s ask engineering students to develop a silent biodegradable snack bag and then give them $10,000 for it. What do you say, MTV?