SunChips is now discontinuing their line of biodegradable bags after Facebook groups and other complaints sprung up against the noisy bags. The bags, which were made of polyastic acid, a plant product, made the bags louder than their plastic counterparts.           

Virtually all other chip bags are made of plastic, whose main component is petroleum. According to a study made in 2007 by online market research firm InsightExpress for chemical giant Metabolix, Inc and food processor Archer Daniels Midland, 72 percent of Americans don’t realize plastic is made from petroleum.           

With oil reserves dwindling at a pace of 85 million barrels a day, the super-abundance of plastics in our daily life, the accumulation of plastic junk in our expanding landfills and the increasing price of oil as it runs out, one would think that alternatives to petroleum-based bags would be embraced.           

In the case of the SunChips bags however, the noise that they made was too much to handle for too many people. The company saw their sales decline by 11 percent last year and is attributing this to the bags.           

As oil production peaks, which most experts say is happening now or will happen in the very near future, oil will become increasingly scarce and expensive. Most oil goes towards powering automobiles (we only get four percent of our electricity from oil), but 10 percent goes towards making plastics.           

In your dorm or apartment:, the phone, laptop, TV, refrigerator, microwave, beverage and food containers, pens, speakers, calculator, trash bins, lamp, binders, alarm clock, tape, ear buds and shoes are at least in part made of plastic, and thus, are petroleum products. Everything else in your room is also somehow linked with oil usage. Your clothes for instance were grown with petroleum-based fertilizers and transported to the warehouse and store by trucks, planes, ships or trains burning oil.

When the price of oil goes up, it affects more than just the price at the pump. It affects the price of almost everything.           

If Americans can’t even make a sacrifice like putting up with noisier bags, which is just such a burden, how will they cope with bigger lifestyle changes like taking public transport, which currently accounts for just 12 percent of trips?           

How high-strung do you have to be to get upset over a noisy chip bag? Especially when you should be able to realize, from the huge print on the bag, that the reason for this is that they are compostable. I am optimistic enough to think that most people know what that means and that it has a positive connotation in their minds.           

On the other hand, one might ask why anyone should be so upset about the loss of the noisy bag, since it is just one of many products and it’s influence on oil levels and prices is minuscule.

I think that the resistance to the bag is mostly symbolic. It shows us how disturbingly little we’re willing to sacrifice. That is if you can even call putting up with noisy bags a sacrifice. It shows us how stubborn and ignorant we are of the problems facing us. People want energy independence and they don’t want to fight wars in the Middle East over oil. People want cheap chips, too. But those same people will resist even the tiniest of changes.           

Like it or not, as oil becomes more expensive, companies will look for alternatives to keep prices down and the options may not always look and feel the same or even be of the same quality as the petroleum-based products before them.           

Nosier bags of chips should be the least of our concerns. The medical industry, for example, has become dependent on plastic in the form of sterile containers and disposable syringes. Sufficient alternatives will be hard to come by.           

But besides making products with petroleum, there is the problem of what to do with the products upon disposal. A shift towards biodegradable bioplastics like the SunChips bag can alleviate some of these problems, which present themselves in the form of over-filling landfills

 and the 10-million-square mile swirl of mostly plastic junk in the Pacific Ocean known colloquially as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”                                 

According to their website, SunChips will continue to use the compostable bags for the original flavor, claim to be committed to improving upon the bags and “look forward to introducing the next generation compostable bag.”           

SunChips bags are just a small part of the big picture, but the resistance against the bags may indicate something much greater.      

Tim Cheplick is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].