Greenpeace

Ashley Perry is a 12-year-old at Friedman Middle School in Taunton, Massachusetts, who has taken to activism and campaigning at an early age. 

As we all know, Kimberly-Clark destroys ancient forests to make tissue-products like Kleenex and Scott tissues.  Ashley is running her own Kleercut campaign!

First, she implemented a Perry-family boycott of Kimberly-Clark products.  Ashley had read about Greenpeace’s Kleercut campaign on our website, took action, and she was able to persuade her family to follow her lead.  

Ashley has taken her campaign on the road as well; she refuses to use Kleenex at her friends’ houses!  She has distributed fliers that talk about switching to a more environmentally friendly tissue brand in her neighbors’ mailboxes and handed them out to spectators at the local baseball field about.

At her school, Ashley is a member of the Blue Crew, a group of students who go around twice a week to the classrooms to pick up paper for recycling.  In addition to her Kleenex-boycott work, Ashley has, along with her mom’s help, started a recycling program—the Ashley Perry Project—at the local baseball field.  Every week Ashley and her mom go retrieve the recyclables and bring them home to put in their own bins.  Recently Ashley wrote a letter to her school asking them to place recycling bins in the cafeteria for paper and plastic products.  Ashley says the response from her classmates and community members has been positive.  “They have been pretty good about recycling and putting it in the right bins,” she says.

Thanks to Ashley for taking the initiative, doing the research and making positive change!  It will take all of us to protect the ancient forests!

Keep up the great work, Ashley!

Andrea

Ethical Corporation’s “Greenwasher,” is a monthly column dedicated to pointing out inaccuracies in the seemingly environmental practices / actions of companies and corporations, has chosen to highlight tissue-giant Kimberly-Clark, makers of products such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Kotex, and Depends, for the second time this year.

According to their website, Kimberly-Clark (K-C) “emphasizes sustainability and sound environmental practices as cornerstones of doing business…”  The irony lies in that K-C’s recycled tissue boxes hold tissues that are not recycled.  How could they let this happen?  How can the box that holds their tissue be the only part of the product that is recycled?

To further add to the greenwasher theme, K-C has released a sustainability report that states the wood fiber K-C receives from the Boreal Forest in Ontario, Canada, is “sawdust and chips – or leftovers.”  

There are two reasons that the above statement is ironic and a false environmental-advertisement.  First, the Kenogami Forest in northern Ontario has been completely destroyed and habitat has been lost due to K-C’s more than 70-year occupation.  Really, there is nothing “leftover” for K-C to log in the Kenogami.

In addition, a woodpile—enough to fill 7000 truckloads—was recently found in northern Ontario in the Ogoki forest, northwest of the Kenogami Forest.  These logs—rotting in the forest—were earmarked for a mill whose largest customer is Kimberly-Clark.  This is a direct consequence of poor forest management.  Is this the “leftovers” K-C describes in their sustainability report?

Tell Kimberly-Clark to stop talking about “sustainability practices” and actually put them into action.
 

Until the ancient forests are protected,

Andrea

Greenpeace and  Kimberly-Clark have announced the successful resolution of the Kleercut campaign as the maker of Kleenex has established a new sustainability policy focused on protecting Endangered Forests. Go to www.greenpeace.org/kleercut to find out more!

Yesterday at the Kimberly-Clark (K-C) facility in Roswell, GA, several Greenpeace activists met the employee lunch crowd with a message of sustainability. The grounds of this facility, the largest of K-C’s office complexes, are picturesque, pristinely manicured, complete with a centrally located pond and jogging track. It was gorgeously landscaped (in fact, we even saw the care-crew) with flowers, shrubs, and, yes, trees. Lots of trees. Big, beautiful, arching canopies cast leafy shade upon the campus nestled in the northern Atlanta suburbs. Yes, it is ironic that the world’s largest producer of Kleenex tissues, with a known history of unsustainable logging practices, has a campus so populated with trees.

And it also seems ironic that time and time again, Greenpeace has to reiterate to K-C the importance of using wood that has been sustainability logged and incorporating recycled fiber into their products. Obviously, they see and appreciate the beauty of nature. They understand that their employees value a work environment connected to the natural world. Yet they are not willing to put this practice into their tissue making.  

So, using the landscape to our advantage, a crew of Greenpeace activists deployed a boat into the pond at this Georgia facility. The teamwork was seamless; the boat was floating in the pond in mere minutes. Three activists, Nate Stellhorn (Austin Frontline), Suzahn Ebrahimian (DC Frontline), and Sheila Hanley (Austin, former GOT, former Frontline) paddled to the center of the pond and deployed three banners while reading aloud, through a bull-horn, the case study Greenpeace put out of K-C's mismanagement of the Kenogami Forest. Called Cut & Run, the case study exposes Kimberly-Clark’s 70-year history of sourcing fiber from the Kenogami Forest in Ontario, Canada, and tells the story of horrific forest degradation, social injustice towards indigenous tribes, and field reports of decreasing wolverine, caribou, and eagle populations — all the result of K-C producing their disposable products.

While the boat was deployed, several members of the team distributed fliers onto the cars of K-C execs. The fliers stated that producing tissues out of a limited resource is no longer acceptable or sustainable when products can be made containing recycled content. The fliers also invited K-C employees to ask their employer to be an environmental leader.

As the security was quite tight, six activists were brought to the Roswell Detention Center, but not before the message was delivered loud and clear, thanks to the bullhorns, that K-C needs to change its ways. The activists were tired and hungry by the time they were released from jail, but nonetheless happy and healthy.

We know deep down, somewhere, Kimberly-Clark cares about the environment. We saw it.

We are not deterred.


Until the ancient forests are protected,
Andrea