DALLAS — By 2025, snack lovers should be able to worry less about the environment when buying bags of Lay’s, Cheetos, Doritos and more.
As part of parent company PepsiCo’s Pep+ initiative — which aims to make 100% of packaging recyclable, compostable, biodegradable or reusable by 2025 — Frito-Lay and Quaker found a way to speed up sustainability innovation with a new Greenhouse Learning Center at its research and development headquarters in Plano.
The company’s goal is to develop a chip bag that can be composted at home, rather than sent off to an industrial facility.
Yolanda Malone, vice president of global foods packaging for PepsiCo, has led the way on sustainable packaging at the company. She says the greenhouse is key to testing package prototypes. The greenhouse has several see-through compost bins to show how quickly new prototypes will biodegrade in a variety of conditions.
Plano-based Frito-Lay has been leading the industry in sustainability since 2010, when it released the first 100% commercially compostable chip bags. Consumers complained they were “too noisy,” but Frito-Lay continued innovating with a goal to design packaging that balances consumer needs with food safety and sustainability.
Frito-Lay’s current compostable bag, which was introduced in 2021 with the Off the Eaten Path brand, is less noisy than the first iteration, plus it’s industrially compostable and made from 85% renewable plant materials. It creates about 60% lower greenhouse gas emissions than traditional packaging, according to the company. The bags can be composted through TerraCycle, a free composting program.
About 36% of all plastics produced are used in packaging, including single-use plastic products for food and beverage containers, 85% of which ends up in landfills or as unregulated waste, according to the U.N. Environment Programme. And that waste is what Frito-Lay wants to minimize — and quickly.
“Our sustainable packaging vision is to build a world where packaging need never become waste,” said Denise Lefebvre, senior vice president of R&D for PepsiCo. “We are prioritizing, investing in and expediting projects to build a more circular, inclusive economy.”
David Allen, chief sustainability officer for PepsiCo Foods North America, said the greenhouse is also designed to be an educational tool for the industry.
“We really want to drive the entire industry forward,” he said, by sharing sustainable practices — and even technology — with partners and stakeholders at no cost.
“We must work together to inspire positive change for the planet and people, and Frito-Lay and Quaker are proud to be leading the way,” Allen said.
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