By Earth Day 2010, PepsiCo plans to rollout a package for its Frito-Lay SunChips snacks that is 100% compostable. The packaging innovation is part of a broad campaign by PepsiCo to reduce the company’s impact on the environment through water, energy and packaging initiatives. As a step towards next year’s package, Frito-Lay has already released SunChips packaging that has an outer layer made from a compostable plant-based renewable material, polylactic acid (PLA).

Current snack food packaging has three layers: a printed outer layer with packaging visuals/graphics, an inner layer, which serves as a barrier to maintain the quality and integrity of the product, and a middle layer that joins the other two layers. When the packaging is 100% compostable, it will fully decompose in about 14 weeks when placed in a hot, active compost pile or bin. NatureWorks LLC is providing the PLA, which is trademarked under the Ingeo name.

Big brand skeptics may continue to see these measures as smoke and mirrors- “think of the waste this company produces,” they’ll shout- but they’d be missing the larger point. Consumers will continue to be consumers, and when a brand like PepsiCo makes these sorts of plans, it moves the entire industry in a greener direction. Hopefully this is just the tip of the iceberg for compostable packaging.