"dirt" under the snow

Reluctantly I trucked out my back door, through the snow, to check on my neglected compost. I have to be honest; I only pulled on my boots because of Treehugger.com & Sun Chips (yup, the snack). But we need to go back about seven months to this past spring & all the excitement of my new found green pursuits to get a grip on why I needed a peek under the lid.
My kids love sweets & treats. So you can imagine, I avoid taking them to the grocery store at all costs. This time, however, could not be avoided. We spilled out of the car & into the store for what I hoped would be a quick hit. Then the requests, demands & general surliness started. “No” was the answer aisle by aisle, until we came upon a “field” of green. There stood a big tower of SunChips in a new green bag, which proclaimed to the world…100%compostable. Ok, fun, coveted snack for the kids & science experiment of the eco-nature for me. Win-win. Throw ‘em in the cart, junior!
Fast forward to the middle of winter, no can do. The bag in our composter is 100% intact. It seems Consumer Reports (December 2010 issue) did a bit of investigation into the claim & had about the same results I did. In the meantime, SunChips have pulled the products with the groundbreaking packaging under a veil of consumer complaints due to the excessive loud crinkling the bag made. Kinda makes sense, can’t be a couch potato with a bag of crinkly chips disturbing your reality show. It may, however, be consumer complaints of non compost-ability (I suspect, anyway)! We shall never know.
But one thing is for certain. If at first you don’t succeed, etc, etc. I do hope companies like SunChips & others keep working on innovative packaging & practices to help minimize the enormous amount of trash we throw away every day. Because let’s face it, chips aren’t going anywhere, so the packaging needs to.