Who is telling the truth?
February 12th, 2006 by Mollie
Spurred on by my husband’s cold (I am boiling eucalyptus leaves in water as I write this) and the many others who have head colds, the flu, and good old everyday runny noses, I thought that I would write about runny noses, Kleenex facial tissues, and ancient forests. As I was preparing to write this post on Kimberly-Clark using ancient forests in the production of Kleenex facial tissues when I came upon a problem, conflicting information.
Greenpeace has been very active (would we expect anything less?) against the Kimberly-Clark brand on the grounds that ancient or old growth trees are used to produce their disposable tissue products. I began by looking at the Greenpeace website. November 3, 2005 Greenpeace had a “Day of Action Against Kimberly-Clark” and hundreds of demonstrations took place to educate the public on the ecological destruction taking place at the hands of the Kimberly-Clark corporation. I did a little more research on the Greenpeace site, found loads of good information, and then headed over to the Kimberly-Clark site to see if they had anything to say regarding this matter.
Now, usually one of two things happens when a company is severly criticized for being harmful to the environment or its employees, either, they avoid the issue completely or they try to redirect our attention to the other wonderful and charitable things they are doing. However, right there on the homepage and also in the About Us section of their website (this is where you want to go first when you are looking for information regarding a company’s philosophy and practices) I saw a link titled “K-C’S SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY PRACTICES”. Huh? This was not what I was expecting. Now, there are a lot of people who are a lot more knowledgeable about the environment, know the correct lingo, and savvy in the ways of interpreting corporate environmental information and seeing through a company’s spinning of information. For those of us who can not be characterized as that way, what do you do with “K-C is committed to preserving ecologically signficant old growth forests”? I read their “Supporting Sustainable Forestry Practices” with a very skeptical eye. Is the loophole found in the word “signficant”? If it is, where is the the loophole in being “selected as the sustainability leader in the Personal Products sector of the 2006 Dow Jones Sustainability World Indexes” which apparently is a reflection of their “commitment to creating sustainable growth and shareholder value”. They also happen to be members of “the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Forest Products Industry Working Group, the latter of which is working in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund on the recognition and use of forestry schemes”.
My last hope at resolving this conflicting information was to find a date. Maybe it was published recently and the activism of Greenpeace paid off and Kimberly-Clark has said good-bye to its horrible ways. Unfortunately, I am not so lucky. It was published in October 2005, the month prior to Greenpeace’s “Day of Action Against Kimberly-Clark”.
Am I missing something? Whose information I am supposed to believe?