Can Sun Chips make you a better person?

I’ve never been a successful composter, despite probably a dozen attempts over two decades. The one brew-mound that got closest to actually producing soil wound up as my most spectacular failure, obliterated by a bulldozer during a flood-prevention excavation project. (When the kids sled down the hill in the backyard these days, I sometimes think about how a few feet under all that fresh white snow lies a fetid pocket of pumpkin corpses and banana skins.)

But last night I trekked out to the most recent half-formed compost heap, inspired by, of all things, an advertiser. I’d clicked on a Sun Chips video showing how its new biodegradable bag supposedly decomposes in a compost bin, and was encouraged to do my part by starting my own compost bin, that I could then presumably drop my new Sun Chips bags in. I didn’t rush out to buy a bag of Sun Chips, but I was suddenly overcome with an urgent need to see if I could disintegrate an empty carton of Full Moon Pale Ale.

I tore the box up and mixed it in with some fuzzy corn tortilla dough and a few wilted lettuce leaves. Maybe this will be the year everything comes together, after it all falls apart.

In the meantime, though, I’m left with this nagging feeling that somehow Sun Chips has managed to plant something besides sweetness and light in my brain. Is it possible that the people who run this company are so well-intentioned that they only want to save the planet? Or am I going to start sleepdriving to the nearest convenience store, murmuring “Must have Sun Chips... must have Sun Chips....?”