Greenpeace activists keep the pressure on Kimberly-Clark

Several Greenpeace activists locked down the main entrance to Kimberly-Clark's global administrative headquarters in Knoxville, TN today as part of their ongoing effort to pressure the company into adopting business practices that protect rather than devastate North America's remaining Boreal forests. While the lockdown was under way, another group of activists deployed a 30 ft. by 20 ft. banner from the facility's parking garage that read: "Kleenex: Wiping away ancient forests."

"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."

Kimberly-Clark (KC) is the largest tissue-maker in the world. It manufactures the popular Kleenex brand of tissue products, as well as the Cottonelle and Scott brands of paper products. More than 3 million tons of virgin tree pulp is used to make the company's products every year. Meanwhile, none of the fiber for Kleenex products sold in North America comes from recycled sources.

Though KC portrays itself as a responsible corporate citizen, the company has not made a real commitment to sourcing its virgin fiber sustainably, and refuses to set a higher standard for recycled content in its products. This has led, as Greenpeace exposed in its recent Cut & Run report, to the devastation of Canada's Kenogami Forest. KC buys nearly 250,000 tons of its tree pulp from a mill that logs the Kenogami using utterly destructive clearcut practices.

Since KC began sourcing pulp from the Kenogami in 1937, more than 70% of the forest has become fragmented, meaning only small pockets of forest are still intact. This has led to total devastation of the Kenogami's eco-system, as fragmented forests cannot sustain wildlife.

Greenpeace's activists locked down the KC Knoxville facility to communicate their demands directly to the employees who work there. If KC's decision-makers are truly concerned with corporate responsibility, they  must commit to sourcing the pulp used in their products sustainably and set a higher standard for recycled content across their product lines, which will reduce the amount of virgin pulp the company uses in the first place. Without such commitments, KC will continue to literally wipe ancient forests off the planet just to make its disposable paper products.