Kleercut

I've been adding some new buttons to our Blue Action sidebar recently. Most of them are self-evident, but there is one which may not be, linking to a campaign perhaps needing some explanation. It's the "Kleercut" button, bearing an eerie resemblance to a famous trademark, yes? Yes, of course, the script and those first four letters make us immediately, albeit subconsciously, think: Kleenex. The Kleercut Campaign was started last year by Greenpeace/Canada and the NRDC, with the objective of getting Kimberly-Clark to stop devastating ancient forests for its products' raw materials.

Kimberly-Clark produces facial tissues, toilet paper, napkins and paper towels. Among its famous signature brands are Kleenex, Scott, Cottonelle and Viva. In order to obtain virgin fiber with which to provide us these entirely disposable paper products, it is clear-cutting trees in this continent's Boreal forests. Products, such as Kleenex, used for the sole purpose of wiping away our offending bodily effluents, are made entirely of this fiber. The Boreal stretches from Alaska into western Canada, then across the northern reaches of much of the continent. K-C, however, is reducing the forest systematically by an area the size of a soccer field every two seconds. Some parts of the Boreal have existed for 10,000 years. They are the habitat for wildlife, such as grizzly bears, wolves, caribou, bald eagles, and a large percentage of the world's songbirds, as well as home to countless communities of indigenous peoples.

It is possible to manufacture these products using post-consumer recycled materials, although such recycled products are not easily found on our supermarket shelves. The last time I shopped for toilet tissue, it seemed to me that every package I picked up was a K-C product. I have now ordered a case of 100% recycled tissue from Seventh Generation, hoping to avoid this frustration for quite a while. Greenpeace Canada has a great site, the Greenpeace Shopper's Guide, for just about every consumer good you might be looking for. In the case of paper products, this is the link.

You can find more info on K-C's logging practices here in this Backgrounder from NRDC (a PDF file). This is the world's largest manufacturer of tissue products. The Kleercut campaign asks us to boycott their products in favor of those using recycled fibers, to write, email, fax, them letters requesting that they change their policies. Does this seem like a nit-picking issue in these days of so many enviromental horrors? Far from it. Clear cutting these forests not only has an impact on wildlife species in danger of extinction, it has an impact on the most important environmental issue of our time: climate change. Deforestation of the planet is one of the human actions, along with the burning of fossil fuels, that has led to the current situation. We can't afford to continue to wipe our butts and blow our noses with trees that could protect the future of the planet. Click on the Kleercut button and get involved.

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