Article To Comment On: In Eco-Friendly Factory, Low-Guilt Potato Chips

By ANDREW MARTIN

Published: November 15, 2007

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. — At Frito-Lay’s factory here, more than 500,000 pounds of potatoes arrive every day from New Mexico to be washed, sliced, fried, seasoned and portioned into bags of Lay’s and Ruffles chips. The process devours enormous amounts of energy, and creates vast amounts of wastewater, starch and potato peelings.

The use of vacuum hoses at an Arizona plant reduces the amount of heat needed to cook potato chips.

Now, Frito-Lay is embarking on an ambitious plan to change the way this factory operates, and in the process, create a new type of snack: the environmentally benign chip.

Its goal is to take the Casa Grande plant off the power grid, or nearly so, and run it almost entirely on renewable fuels and recycled water. Net zero, as the concept is called, has the backing of the highest levels of corporate executives at PepsiCo, the parent company of Frito-Lay. [ keep reading! ]