Kimberly-Clark and Greenpeace collaborate on sustainable fibre procurement

Article taken from Greenpeace.  To view article, click here

At a joint news conference in Washington DC, Greenpeace and the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, the world's largest tissue-product manufacturer, announced an historic agreement that will ensure greater protection and sustainable management of Canada's Boreal Forest. The agreement also will stand out as a model for forest-products companies worldwide.

Canada's Boreal Forest is North America's largest ancient forest and provides habitat for threatened wildlife such as woodland caribou, wolverine and over one billion migratory birds. The new agreement ensures that Kimberly-Clark, which makes Kleenex-brand products, will no longer be purchasing pulp from the three million hectare Kenogami and Ogoki Forests in northern Ontario unless strict ecological criteria are met. These two areas within key zones of intact forest have been at the center of Greenpeace's Kleercut campaign. As part of the agreement, Greenpeace announced that its nearly five-year-long Kleercut campaign against Kimberly-Clark is ended.

The success of the discussions between Greenpeace and Kimberly-Clark means a movement away from conflict to a new collaborative relationship to further promote forest conservation, responsible forest management, and the use of recycled fiber for the manufacture of tissue products.

Greenpeace's Kleercut campaign was launched in November 2004. This campaign to help protect ancient forests in Canada and globally applied pressure on the company via the marketplace and its large customers and consumers. In order to highlight the issue, hundreds of protests took place globally, resulting in more than 50 activists arrested in acts of peaceful civil disobedience. Scientific and exposé reports, media mobilization and shareholder engagement were also an important part of the campaign. This work and dedication reached a successful conclusion with Kimberly-Clark's release of the strongest paper policy by one of the world's top three tissue product manufacturers.

The agreement with Kimberly-Clark is the second major victory this year for Greenpeace's forest campaign. At the end of March, Greenpeace celebrated an enormous success- the protection of the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia. It is the most comprehensive rainforest conservation plan in North America and protects an area nearly the size of Belgium. The success was the direct result of a decade-long campaign that thousands of Greenpeace supporters joined.

Implementation of the policy will lead to protection of the world's most endangered forests, increased support for sustainable forest management through Forest Stewardship Council certification and the increased use of recycled fiber in Kimberly-Clark products.

During the evolution of this policy, Kimberly-Clark stopped buying more than 325,000 tonnes of pulp a year from logging operations in the Kenogami and Ogoki Forests. The company managing these forests was unwilling to protect endangered forest areas in them and supply Kimberly-Clark with Forest Stewardship Council certified pulp.

Protection of the Boreal Forest is crucial to world efforts to stop climate change. This forest is the largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon on the planet, storing 27 years worth of greenhouse gas emissions or 186 billion tonnes. If this carbon is released into the atmosphere it will add to the threat of catastrophic climate change.

Under the policy Kimberly-Clark has set a goal of ensuring that 100 per cent of the fibre used in its products will be from environmentally responsible sources. It will greatly increase its use of recycled fibre and fibre from forest certified to Forest Stewardship Council standards. By 2011, it will also increase the use of recycled and FSC fibre [from North America sources] to 40 per cent from 29.7 per cent in 2007. By 2012, the company will no longer use pulp from the Boreal Forest unless is it certified to the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council.

To download Kimberly-Clark's fibre procurement policy click here

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