The Tuesday morning panel at Sustainable Brands 2009 focused on "taking the pulse" of sustainable brands and included a lively presentation by Thomas Oh, Director of Marketing at Frito Lay (part of the PepsiCo family), on the brand of SunChips.

As I write this, I have a bag of SunChips I just bought at my side. The list of ingredients on the label includes sugar, artificial color and one obscure ingredient I had to Google (Maltodextrin).

A Model Chip?
I was surprised to see Adam Werbach of Saatchi and Saatchi S, after promoting community supported agriculture (CSA) during his presentation yesterday, proclaim on Twitter today “SunChips rocks—solar powered, biodegradable bag…” To be a truly sustainable, nourishing snack, they are going to have to push the envelope beyond whole grain goodness, less fat and one solar powered plant to live up to the tagline "good for me and the planet."

Yet, if you hold SunChips up to many of the ideals presented at the conference, they hit the mark on many of them: commit to an ambitious goal, educate and empower your customers, begin with baby steps, be transparent, don’t wait for perfection and create strategic partnerships.

Their baby steps included converting a portion of its Modesto, California plant to solar energy. The move was positioned as “a small step towards a healthier planet.” According to the agency, teehan+lax, the idea was to open the conversation to consumers and ask, “What small steps would you take?” The ad campaign, which used Facebook to engage customers in a conversation, won a 2009 Effie Award this week for the green category.

Their latest advertisements include a print ad with the claim “my chips are made with solar power.” This claim seems a bit misleading given the fact that only one of their seven plants currently incorporates solar, and what percentage of this plant gets its energy from solar is not clear. But they are headed in the right direction, with plans to add solar to their Arizona plant next.

A Compostable Bag
Responding to consumer concerns around packaging, their ambitious goal is a commitment to transform their packaging by creating a 100% compostable bag by Earth Day 2010. The day before Earth Day 2009, they ran a 14-second ad after American Idol showing the process of a bag decomposing over 14 weeks.

The ad, which ran only once, generated 115,000,000 media impressions, including a Twitter post by Demi Moore that generated significant conversation. Today, a third of every 10 1/2 oz. SunChips bag is made with renewable plant based materials, their first step toward reducing the amount of non-renewable materials they use for packaging.

The bag you will find of the shelf today cannot be composted, but does have a smaller carbon footprint because it uses less petroleum-based plastic. The bags are made with a bio-based plastic known as Polylactic acid or PLA. PLA is a fully biodegradable, compostable corn-based polymer made by NatureWorks. At their plant in Nebraska, locally harvested corn is broken down into corn sugar (also known as dextrose). The dextrose is then fermented and distilled into a substance called lactic acid, which is transformed into PLA pellets. But the green bag and the solar plant are old news.

Increasing Awareness of Composting
The new story is their commitment to educating consumers on the value of composting and working with strategic partners, such as the U.S. Composting Council, to increase municipal compost programs. They also have a new partnership with TerraCycle, where consumers will be able to drop off their SunChips bags at collection points for commercial composting.

Greener, Better and Happier—One Idea at a Time
And their most recent program, Green Effect, is a creative partnership with National Geographic to engage consumers to be part of the solution. Anyone can submit a short “business plan” on a simple idea that will inspire others to take a small action. The five best green ideas will receive $20,000 in funding. They developed a great ad clip around the idea that the planet needs a small favor—one idea to make it greener and happier.

The ideas will be rated by an “A-team” of green judges, including actor Edward Norton, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, the new Chief Executive Officer of Green For All, and Jayni Chase, Founder of the Center For Environmental Education. As of today, over 1,400 submissions have been entered. The deadline for the competition is June 8th. This is a great program for engaging consumers and supporting them to think creatively about potential solutions.

Deborah Fleischer is the principal and founder of the sustainability consulting firm Green Impact.