Media release - August 14, 2008
Environmental activists are now barricading themselves to the entrance of Kimberly-Clark’s area office and have deployed a 30 x 20-foot-banner that reads: "Kleenex: Wiping Away Ancient Forests." The activists are part of an international campaign to force Kimberly-Clark to stop purchasing pulp from destructive logging operations in Canada’s Boreal Forest and to increase its use of recycled materials for its disposable products such as Kleenex and Cottonelle. The office complex is located at 520 W. Summit Hill Dr.
"Greenpeace demands that Kimberly-Clark stop wiping away our
treasured, ancient forests to make disposable products like tissue
and toilet paper," said Lindsey Allen, Greenpeace forest
campaigner. "Greenpeace will continue to directly communicate with
Kimberly-Clark employees at events like this until the company
stops using endangered forests such as the Boreal to make products
that are used once and then thrown away."
A recent Greenpeace report revealed that Kimberly-Clark devastated
Ontario's Kenogami Forest while promoting itself as a socially
responsible environmental leader. The report, "Cut and Run:
Kimberly-Clark's Legacy of Environmental Devastation," uses
government information, independent audits, public records, and
satellite mapping to document Kimberly-Clark's management and
logging of the Kenogami Forest near Thunder Bay, Ontario. It
details how, in just 70 years, the Kenogami Forest has been turned
from a vast expanse of healthy, near-pristine forest to a severely
damaged landscape rife with social and environmental
problems--largely to make products that are used once and then
thrown away.
"Kimberly-Clark is not taking the interests of the green consumer
seriously," Allen said. "People who care about the environment do
not want toilet paper that helps destroy caribou habitat and bird
nesting sites. Instead, Kimberly-Clark should increase the
post-consumer recycled content of its paper products."
Kimberly-Clark is the largest tissue product company in the world.
It manufactures the popular Kleenex brand of tissue products, which
is sold in several formats--toilet paper, facial tissue and
napkins. Kimberly-Clark produces millions of tons of tissue
products annually and generates net sales of $18.3 billion.
VVPR info: CONTACT: Daniel Kessler, Greenpeace, (970) 690-2728; Lindsey Allen, Greenpeace, (415) 710-5601
Notes: For more information about Greenpeace’s campaign to save the Boreal and to download “Cut and Run,” please visit www.Kleercut.net