Subject: BIOD AA: Old Growth Toilet Paper
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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
     http://forests.org/.nl/locate/ContentsDirecttml

11/13/97
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
Rainforest Action Network reports on the atrocious practice of making 
throw-away consumer products from old growth forests, including 
producing toilet paper!  It is absolutely essential that the vast 
majority of remaining old-growth forest be preserved.  Old-growth 
forests that must be harvested because of pressing local subsistence 
and development needs should be put under certified forest management 
coupled to adjacent large preservation areas.  Failure to do so, and 
quickly, dooms the World to a vastly diminished biological legacy.  
Appeals are made for letters to Kimberley-Clark, calling for them to 
halt purchase of pulp derived from old-growth.
g.b.

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Title:   Intolerable: Old Growth Toilet Paper 
Source:  Rainforest Action Network
Status:  Distribute freely for non-commercial use & with accreditation 
Date:    Thu, 13 Nov 1997   

RAINFOREST ACTION NETWORK
Action Alert #132

Intolerable:  Old Growth Toilet Paper

IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY we no longer rely on whales as a source of 
oil. We no longer feast on buffalo tongue, and find it reprehensible 
to kill elephants for ivory.  But with a new millennium dawning, old 
growth forests worldwide are still being cut down and processed into a 
wide array of consumer products.  Pulped old growth forests go into 
toilet paper and cellulose products, including rayon, camera film and 
cigarette filters. Building products include 2x4's and decorative 
molding.  The companies that profit from these products will only 
change their ways when the public makes it clear that destroying old 
growth forests is no longer acceptable.

Kimberly-Clark, for instance, sells Kleenex, Huggies, Viva towels and 
Scott tissue.  Their advertising campaigns are soft and cuddly; a key 
point of their public relations happy talk is their claim that they 
are not involved in rainforest destruction anywhere.  However, to make 
its disposable paper products, Kimberly-Clark buys raw materials that 
were ripped from old growth forests around the world.

Kimberly-Clark's Brazilian pulp supplier, Aracruz Cellulose, is 
logging in Brazil's Atlantic rainforest, one of the most endangered 
tropical rainforests.  Even by conservative estimates, less than 8% of 
this forest is left.  Aracruz has replaced the previously cut old 
growth forest with massive eucalyptus plantations, and recent reports 
indicate cutting is still going on in the old growth rainforest.

The Aracruz plantations were once the ancestral homeland of the 
Guarani and Tupinikim Indians. The Brazilian Constitution guarantees 
indigenous land rights, and the government's agencies have determined 
that the land in question rightfully belongs to the Guarani and 
Tupinikim. However, Aracruz is putting heavy pressure on the 
government to downsize the claim. Indigenous groups and human rights 
organizations fear the precedent this could set for other tribes 
throughout Brazil.

Kimberly-Clark also purchases raw materials from British Columbia, and 
the logging companies there clear old growth forest faster than almost 
any other region in the world.  Almost 100 percent of the logging in 
B.C. is clearcutting old growth forests. Even in Canada's globally 
rare temperate rainforests, only 19 percent of the large rainforest 
valleys have survived intact to this day, and half of these areas are 
slated for logging within the next five years.

Budding hope of reform in B.C.'s logging industry recently has been 
dashed. Leaked government documents show that the rate of logging and 
the practice of clearcutting old growth forests have continued 
unabated behind a facade of environmental reform. In classic 
bureaucratic newspeak, 45% of B.C. has secretly been designated to 
become "low biodiversity" zones and another 45% as "intermediate." In 
plain English, 90% of B.C. will become a sacrifice zone. Even the 
leaked documents acknowledge that "the risk of native species being 
unable to survive will be relatively high."

At least half of the old growth logging in B.C. supplies the U.S. 
market demand for cheap lumber and wood pulp. In order to stop the 
destruction of old growth forests, companies like Kimberly-Clark must 
stop using old growth wood to manufacture their products.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Kimberly-Clark's products represent one example of the rainforest 
destruction and human rights abuses that are incurred in manufacturing 
American consumer goods. While we can't fight every product one by 
one, we can demand that no products be made from the planet's last 
remaining old growth forests.  Let's start with Kimberly-Clark.  Here 
is a sample letter:

Mr. Wayne Sanders, CEO
Kimberly-Clark World Headquarters
P.O. Box 619100
Dallas, TX 75261

Dear Mr. Sanders,
In this day and age, it is absolutely unacceptable to be using pulp 
purchased from companies that cut down old growth forests. Using old 
growth pulp to make tissue paper is barbaric-like killing elephants 
for their ivory. I ask you to stop using old growth pulp, and to 
establish a company policy to that effect so your customers can know 
that buying your products does not cause the destruction of the 
Earth's last remaining old growth forests.

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