Tissue giant and forest destroyer Kimberly-Clark launched a $100 million advertising blitz for its Cottonelle brand last week – and activists were there to greet them on the first day.

The set-up was as silly as it was expensive: Cottonelle paid for a eerie-looking mutant dog-bus filled with public relations hacks to tour New York City and tell people how to “be kind to your behind.”  Don’t ask me what dogs have to do with toilet paper.  Last time I checked…oh, nevermind.

Anyway, things didn’t go as planned.  Before long, people began asking the Cottonelle reps about their ties to ancient forest destruction.  Cottonelle’s day spiraled down the drain from there.  Click here to see photos of the day.

Activists unfurled a banner in front of the mutant dog-bus and told passersby how Kimberly-Clark products like Cottonelle and Kleenex drive the destruction of ancient forests.  People learned that Cottonelle contains no recycled content, but plenty of wood fiber from the Canadian Boreal forest – the last great ancient forest in North America.  They learned that the Boreal forest is crucial for efforts to fight global warming, critical habitat for caribou, songbirds and bears, and important to Canada’s native First Nations.  They also learned Kimberly-Clark could make Cottonelle from recycled fiber and sustainable wood, but favors spending cash on butt-themed advertising campaigns and greenwashing.

Suddenly, Cottonelle didn’t seem very “kind” to forests, the climate or people.  Folks on the street agreed to keep Cottonelle far from their behinds.  After all, there are plenty of other quality tissue products that are forest friendly (click here for a list).

New York City commuters have expressed disgust over Cottonelle’s toilet-themed ads that literally line the interior of subway cars with headlines like “Too Much Bran?” and “The Average Man Keeps His Underwear Until the Elastic Breaks.”  That’s not what I want to think about during rush hour.

Throwing Cottonelle’s adolescent attempts at bathroom humor back at them, activists donned boxer briefs with slogans such as “Be Kind to Forests” and “Leave Cottonelle Behind.”  Onlookers were amused -- even the famous Times Square “Naked Cowboy” got into the spirit, posing for photos holding a pair of shorts stating: "Leave Cottonelle Behind."

When the day was over, forest defenders left behind literature on Cottonelle tour vehicles (printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper of course) to educate their public relations staff.

Here’s more good news: the Cottonelle toilet paper dog-bus is scheduled to tour cities in the US and Canada for next few months, including Philly, Chicago, Toronto and San Francisco.  Here’s how you can help:

1. Keep your eyes out for Cottonelle ad blitzes and the mutant dog-bus!  Let us know if you spot the bus or think it is coming to your town.

2. If you see the bus, stop by and talk to Cottonelle reps (in a respectful manner, of course) about their role in ancient forest destruction.  Tell them you, your family and your friends won’t buy Cottonelle, Kleenex, or other Kimberly-Clark products until the company protects ancient forests.

3. Take action at our new Kleenex website.  Click here to send a message to Kimberly-Clark, upload photo messages, design your own spoof Kleenex box and more! 

The story of Greenpeace versus the forest destroying dog-bus has just begun.  Stay tuned!

-Rolf
 

If you’re a parent with school age children, a student, or a teacher, there’s a new way you can stand up for ancient forests: make your school Kleenex Free.

If you’ve participated in our Kleercut campaign before, you know tissue giant Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex, Cottonelle, Scott, Viva and other products, destroys ancient forests to make its disposable tissues.  Flushing away ancient forests doesn’t make sense – a grade school student could tell you that!

Of particular concern is the Canadian Boreal forest – the largest ancient forest left in North America.  Kimberly-Clark has a long history of gobbling up ancient forests in the Boreal to make its throw-away products.  In the process they’re chopping apart habitat for woodland caribou, wolverines, songbirds and many other animals.  They’re also cutting into the largest storehouse of carbon on land – something we can’t afford to do if we want to curb global warming.

People are also affected.  About 80% of Canada’s native First Nations are dependent on the Boreal forest for their livelihood and cultural survival.  Many parts of the Boreal are being logged without their input or consent.

So, Kimberly-Clark is earning a failing grade in a lot of basic subjects.  Thankfully, there are plenty of high quality forest friendly tissue products to choose from.  Check out our tissue buying guide to learn more.
 
The other good news is that there are new ways for students, parents and school faculty to teach Kimberly-Clark a lesson.

You can show Kimberly-Clark how you feel about forest destruction. We've unveiled a new online tool so you can send a photo message directly to the company.

Start your own Kleenex Free Schools project today by downloading our new toolkit – a resource guide with tips and info to help you make your school more forest friendly.

All of this and more is available on our new website.

Click here to spread the word to friends, family and colleagues.  If we work together, we can help Kimberly-Clark finally earn a passing grade!

-Rolf

John H

The Heartland Institute has emerged over the last year as the ringleader of global warming denial, challenging Al Gore to pointless debates and now hosting what is possibly the largest Denial cnvergence ever- we'll call it

Denial-a-palooza 2008...

This two day festival of stuff and nonsense, might be better suited as an opening act for Monty Python's Spamalot, playing down the street on Broadway. The conference is sponsored and attended by the small and shrinking tribe of diehard deniers who question the veracity of the global warming crisis and attack those who are trying to do something about it. 

But where on earth is Exxon?  diehard sponsor of said organizations...  A few years back, Exxon would have been giving the keynote speech at a show like this, or at least behind the scenes pulling puppet strings.  In fact many companies would have been eager to endorse this counterinsurgency.  Not now apparently.

Lost

The train has left the station, but they’ll always have each other, huddled grumpy on the platform.  Well, a little better than the train platform, this week’s conference is being held at the quite pricey Marriot Marquis right on Times Square in New York City.  Someone with deep pockets must be paying Heartland’s bills these days.  We wonder who?

The subtitle of the innocous and official sounding 2008 International Conference on Climate Change is the pleading“Can you hear us now? Global Warming Is Not a Crisis?  There is a megaphone on the cover. While on its face, this is a conference about global warming science, there are well populated conference tracks on Climate Change Politics and  Economics.  To us here at ExxonSecrets, there is no difference between doubting and denying the science and attacking policies to solve it.  The overwhelming and unsettling conclusions of the scientific community on global warming have imparted an urgency and inspiration to the policy community around the world.  If you argue we should do nothing, or do less, you ARE denying the science.  There is no doubt about it.

What Inspires Them?

One wonders how these hardy deniers keep it up in the face of the momentum that has finally arrived.  Or perhaps that is exactly what inspires them.  This is the final battle for this crowd.  It is a crisis for them, a crisis of lost credibility and corporate backing. After at least 15 years of success with tactics of delay and denial and distraction, they are losing badly. 

We are finally on the cusp of passing national global warming regulations in the US (hopefully when we get a new president).  Numerous major corporations have endorsed that goal.  Still more corporations are moving ahead with corporate carbon reduction goals and moving into the market for clean technology. Just what do these denial professionals think of the likes of turncoats Walmart, General Electric, GM, Alcoa, Fed-Ex, Coca-Cola, Bank of America to name a few, who have acknowledged the threat, and either endorsed regulatory approaches or and taken measures to shift investment and business practices?

States and local communities across the country have moved even faster than the Fed to pass regulations and regional carbon reduction efforts.  What do these deniers think of Arnold "the Global Warming Terminator" out in California?

And just what do they think of the fact that our next president, Obama, Clinton and McCain WILL tackle global warming one way or another.  They are all speaking about global warming as the number one environmental threat, and speaking about the economic opportunity in finding solutions?  No wonder Rush Limbaugh and the conservatives hate McCain, he went to the Arctic with Hillary a few years ago to see global warming damage firsthand with the scientists.  McCain has been the unlikely Republican stalwart on global warming since 2000.

So Who Is Here?

There are weathermen, PR flacks, pundits, some scientists as well.  Some fifty organizations are co-sponsors.  Heartland, the host, has asserted on its website and in the program that “No corporate funding was used to support this conference.”  One wonders why they are so insistent on stating this.  Until a few years ago, these groups would proudly proclaim that they were supported by great American corporations (without disclosing their funders).

We've done an ExxonSecrets deluxe map of those we know about.  We have all the cosponsors on the left side, the 50 some odd speakers down the middle and the other organizations they are linked to down the right.

We have data linking some $7.5 Million in Exxon funding (98-06) to many of the prominent cosponsors along with the Heartland Institute.  Maybe Exxon opted out of Heartland’s workplan for 2008 or stipulated that it wouldn’t sponsor this conference?  Again, why are they being so defensive about corporate funding?

We know that a few of the conference cosponsors were dropped by Exxon like rotten hot potatoes in 2006:
Competitive Enterprise Institute,
Center for Defense of Free Enterprise,
Independent Institute
Free Enterprise Education Institute the precursor to Steve Milloy’s Free Enterprise Action Fund

But 10 conference co-sponsors received a total of $782,500 from Exxon in 2006, the latest year for which Exxon has revealed its handouts.

The preface of the conference program claims 400 people will attend, including the 100 or so assorted speakers and panelists.  The featured attendees include PR flacks, pundits, thinktankers, and a small handful of the old-school doctors of denial like Singer, Seitz and Micheals, a few ex-weatherman and even a comedian, not kidding.  There are profiles of the 50 some odd people we know on  ExxonSecrets wiki and DeSmog has posted some detailed profiles here.

Freedom?!

The title of ABC’s John Stossel’s closing address on Tuesday is "Freedom and Its Enemies”  The conference must have something to do with “freedom” or more specifically “free enterprise”, which translates to freedom for corporations.  There are five cosponsoring organizations with free in their names -The Center for Defense of Free Enterprise, Frontiers of Freedom, Free Enterprise Action Fund, The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota, The Free Market Foundation (from S. Africa).  

We will report on this mess over the next couple of days.  Stay tuned.