SunChips Go Compostable, Week 01

The new SunChips bag is out. Early. It was supposed to make its debut on Earth Day, but it's in stores now and it's making itself heard--this bag is loud! I'm guessing the bag is predominantly cellulose, much like the window on an envelope. It's very crinkly sounding.

According to the bag and the online presentation at the SunChips site, it should take fourteen weeks to compost the bag in your backyard. That's a pretty long time, but it's much, much less than it would take for a regular chip bag to decompose in an anaerobic landfill! I thought I would take up the challenge and document my own bag as it goes through the composter.

My tumbling composter is currently full, i.e., I'm not adding any more until it's done "cooking." So, for now, the bag has gone into what is now my staging bin. I have, basically, a twenty gallon garbage can that has been modified for (wholly inefficient) composting. Until the tumbler is finished, or until I build a second tumbler, the old can is gathering my compost materials. That's where the bag has gone. Because of this, my guess is it will take more than fourteen weeks in my yard because the first several weeks are not going to be the most efficient. There's not much I can do about that at the moment.

So, here are a couple of quick pics of the bag and the bag as it sits in the staging barrel. Check back for weekly updates on the progress of my backyard composting of the world's first fully backyard compostable chip bag.