Time for Frito-Lay to Help Clean Up The Mess They Make - 2004

 

Time for Frito-Lay to Help Clean Up the Mess They Make 

In the winter of 2003-2004, while living aboard my boat in Marina del Rey, California, I visited Venice Beach several times each week, strolling along the tide-line and picking up discarded plastic items, as well as seashells, driftwood and whatever else the sea chose to give up.  My guess is that I picked up several tons of plastic waste during that season alone. I considered it my contribution to a "Healthy Earth". 

 

Not surprisingly, the #1 trash item, by count, if not by sheer volume was Frito-Lay, Inc. chip wrappers.  Often, they outnumber all other trash items combined.  On a good day, I could clean half a mile of tide line until it was free of trash.  In a tough day, after a storm sent urban runoff down Ballona Creek and into Santa Monica Bay, I would be lucky to clear one hundred yards of beach.

 

Since I love Fritos, Doritos and “Cheetos-breath” as much as the next person, I decided to see what Frito-Lay might be doing about the reduction of trash and solid waste in our environment.  Since they prominently display the word “Being Green” on their corporate website, I clicked there to see what the company had to say.

 

I was impressed to see how much the corporation was doing to decrease their use of energy, water and to reduce unnecessary packaging.  The problem is that chips need packaging and the sheer number of chip bags produced and discarded outweighs all of the company’s other efforts combined. 

 

On an even more disappointing note, Frito-Lay puts plastic packaging recycling directly back on the consumer.  Quoting from their website, they say, “Cans, paper and glass bottles tend to be more popular recyclable items than plastic [bags].  For more information about the feasibility of starting plastic recycling, we suggest contacting your local city sanitation department”.

 

The net result of this responsibility shifting is that very few of Frito-Lay’s chip wrappers are recycled.  When you combine their lightness with the American propensity to litter the landscape, millions of these wrappers are wafting away on the wind each day.

 

If there are few, if any plastic-wrap recycling programs in America, what can be done to reduce this “number one, with a bullet” solid waste disposal issue?  The solution is simple.  Each chip bag should come with a two-cent deposit, paid at the time of purchase.  One cent could go to whoever returns a chip bag to an authorized recycling center and one cent could go to the recycler for shipping and handling.  Frito-Lay, for their part, could provide sanitary, sealable containers to their route drivers and use their existing deliver fleet to pick up their own trash and recycle it.

 

American business has a long, sad history of polluting the land and water, changing its ways only when forced to do so.  Wouldn’t it be nice if a corporation as large and ubiquitous in our lives as Frito-Lay would step up and take responsibility for its role in the trashing of America?

 

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By James McGillis at 04:14 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link