Frito-Lay will be retiring the compostable Sun Chips bag, which became famous less for its Earth-friendliness than for the 95-decibel crunching sounds it made whenever it was touched. Created from a polymer material based on corn starch, the bags were cursed with a high glass transition temperature. Basically, all polymers have a rubbery state and a stiff state, and each type of polymer switches from floppy to crunchy at a different temperature. For the Sun Chips bags, that was, unfortunately, around normal room temp—so what was supposed to be flexible was constantly turning brittle. And loud. The weird thing: This flaw isn’t inherent to compostable chip bags. Boulder Canyon potato chips makes their version from a wood pulp polymer, which seems to avoid the problem. (Via Erin Biba)