The opportunity to speak directly to the CEO, top executives and the board of a corporation usually comes but once a year, at the annual stockholder meeting. Other times, communication to them is made through layers of bureaucracy that trickle up like water evaporating. One never knows what has been distilled, dissipated and even tainted before it reaches the real decision-makers.
The shareholder meeting presents an opportunity to communicate clearly and directly to the top brass. Today, we did just that. Richard Brooks, Forest Campaigner, Greenpeace Canada, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council and myself confronted Thomas Falk, K-C CEO, their full board and all the executives who steer the company and can make a decision not to use fiber from ancient forests like the Boreal.
As far as shareholder’s meetings go, K-C’s is relatively small for a multinational company of its size, with about 80 people and held for a second year at the fortified and exclusive Four Seasons Resort smack dab in Dallas suburbia. A relatively recent occurrence, their change in meeting venue took place last year due to the Kleercut campaign and the company’s uncertainty of what to expect from Greenpeace. Whereas in 2005 we were warmly greeted by the company’s executives (that is, if you pretended not to notice the sharpshooters on the hotel roof or the myriad of non-uniformed security), this year’s meeting was much less congenial. This change in meeting’s timbre was due in large part to unexpected visitors who courageously and peacefully blockaded tissue production at K-C’s Huntsville, Ontario factory and effectively shut it down.
These 19 activists from the U.S., Canada and Belgium, like many of us, had had enough of the company’s rhetoric and lack of real movement towards ending their contribution to ancient forest destruction. While the activists hung banners, dangled from metal tri-pods and chained themselves to railroad tracks, we were able to convey their brave acts to executives, who were clearly miffed.
We also announced the late breaking news that the Director of Facility Management (the purchaser of tissue paper products) at American University sent a letter to the K-C saying that they will not use their products. We then informed them of a recent poll where over 80% of U.S. and Canadian citizens said that they would buy recycled paper tissue products even at a higher price, if no harm was done to the forest. This poll starkly contrasts the company’s insistence that Americans only want softer and whiter tissues. K-C has yet to account for the fact that once people know the manufacture of tissue paper products contributes to ancient forest ruin, their knowledge of how vital forests are to the health of planet kicks into gear.
And, lastly but certainly not least, we spoke in favor of our support for a shareholder proposal, submitted by a coalition of social responsible investment firms and religious groups holding $21,000,000 in stock, that requested the company to investigate the feasibility of producing environmentally friendly tissue paper products. Surely, a company that purports to be the ‘greenest’ tissue maker in the world should not have a problem with a report of this nature, but they did, encouraging shareholders to vote against the proposal.
The proposal received 7.4% of the vote. Although a seemingly small percentage, for a first time proposal, this is quite good, and guarantees that the proposal can be submitted again in 2007.
At the end of the meeting, it was clear that the CEO, the VPs, and the board’s levees were breached allowing the flood of pleas to save our last remaining ancient forests to pour in. The collective voices of the many, combined with the peaceful civil disobedience of a few, spoke truth to power.
To see photos and video from the Huntsville action, please visit:
www.kleercut.net and TV news coverage:
www.achannel.ca/home/news_28467.aspx 
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