CAMBRIDGE — Hey snack lovers. That bag of chips you’re about to consume may soon be used to perk up your garden.

Frito Lay Canada is introducing what it bills as the world’s first 100 per cent compostable chip bag.

And the company has chosen its plant on Bishop Street in Cambridge to unveil the new bag, which will be used for its Sun Chips brand of snacks.

“It makes me pretty happy that we’re doing it locally,” Helmi Ansari, Frito Lay Canada’s director of sustainability, said in an interview. Ansari was the plant manager in Cambridge before moving to the company’s head office in Mississauga.

The result of four years of research, the bag will be made primarily of a plant-based material called polylactic acid that will completely break down in a hot compost pile in 14 weeks, the company said in a news release.

The bag has also been certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute and can be incorporated into municipal composting and green bin programs, Frito Lay said.

It will start appearing on store shelves later this month in 225-gram and 425-gram Sun Chips bags and in the rest of the Sun Chips line by August, the company said.

While there are other compostable bags on the market for leaves and food waste, nothing was available that would provide the kind of light, moisture and oxygen barrier needed to keep chips fresh, said Ansari.

The compostable bag, which the company has patented, involved research with companies in North America, Asia and Europe, he noted. The bag itself is being made in Arkansas, then shipped in rolls to the Cambridge plant.

The Sun Chips line was chosen for the new bag because it is a multigrain snack consumed by people with more of an interest in green and nutritious products, he said. The ingredients in Sun Chips include corn, sunflower oil, whole wheat and rice.

As well, the bag is “extremely expensive to produce” and the company can only afford to introduce it in one brand at the moment, Ansari said.

With a workforce of about 650, the Cambridge plant is the largest of five Frito Lay plants in Canada, he said. It makes Sun Chips brands for all of North America as well as other Frito Lay brands such as Lay’s, Doritos, Tostitos and Ruffles

Among other green initiatives, the Cambridge plant has reduced its water use by 30 per cent and heats the entire building with waste heat, Ansari said.

On a companywide basis, Frito-Lay Canada said it has reduced manufacturing fuel consumption by more than 20 per cent, cut water use by 30 per cent, diverted 92 per cent of manufacturing waste from landfills into recycling streams and re-used 200 million shipping cartons since 1999.

Frito Lay Canada is owned by the global food and beverage company, PepsiCo Inc.