Feature story - November 30, 2004
If you’re suffering during this year’s cold season, you may be reaching for that box of tissue more often than you’d like. And if you use Kleenex brand tissue products, you’re not only putting some vigorous wear and tear on your nose – chances are you’re blowing away on Canada’s ancient forests.
An activist looks at boreal forest destruction
Kimberly-Clark, maker of Kleenex and other brands of disposable tissue paper products such as toilet paper, uses pulp and paper made from clearcut ancient forests. These forests include the largest tract of ancient forest left in North America: Canada's boreal forest, home to caribou, wolves, eagles and bear, and essential in fighting global climate change.
In North America, less than 19 percent of the pulp that Kimberly-Clark uses for its disposable tissue products comes from recycled sources - well below the sector average. The rest comes from forests such as Canada's boreal. Most of the recycled fiber that Kimberly-Clark does use goes directly into tissue products sold to institutions. The disposable tissue products that you buy at your local grocery store - toilet paper, tissue and napkins - usually contain no recycled fiber whatsoever.
Although Kimberly-Clark, the largest tissue product company in the world, has the capacity to make a much higher percentage of its products from recycled fiber, it chose, in 2003, to use nearly 3 million tons of virgin fiber to produce products that are literally flushed down the toilet.
In response to this senseless destruction, we are demanding that Kimberly-Clark
- Stop using wood fiber from endangered forests such as the boreal forest.
- Stop producing tissue products using only virgin wood fibers and instead maximize the percentage of post-consumer recycled content in all of its products.
- Turn to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) eco-certified forestry operations for what virgin wood fibers it does use.
TAKE ACTION NOW!
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