Activists Block Entrance, Drop Huge Banner at Kimberly-Clark’s Area Office To Demand Kleenex Makers Stop “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.” 

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.