The Greenpeace Kleercut bus began touring the Pacific Northwest on a mission to raise public awareness and apply pressure on Kimberly Clark (K-C) to change their destructive forest policies. The bus, outfitted as a 35-foot tissue box, has the message "KLEENEX: WIPING AWAY ANCIENT FORESTS" painted on the side within the characteristic oval of Kimberly- Clark's Kleenex brand tissues.
With the bus parked on a prominent corner just off Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle, the Greenpeace Direct Dialogue Team fanned out through the heavy foot traffic. "Most people have no idea Kleenex is made from ancient forests" said Brandon Nebeker, a Greenpeace canvasser based in Seattle. "The bus really grabs peoples attention... I think we opened a lot of people's eyes today."
Kimberly-Clark currently uses 100% virgin pulp fiber to create their disposable tissue products and sources much of their forest products from massive clearcuts out of the threatened Boreal forest of Canada. Kimberly-Clark is the largest manufacturer of tissue products in the world, produces the Kleenex, Scott, Viva and Depends brand name products. The Kleercut campaign is asking that Kimberly-Clark stop using wood logged from Endangered Forests, increase recycled content in all their paper products and commit to using forest products from Forest Stewardship Council certified logging operations.
In the coming week the Kleercut bus will be doing direct outreach to Wal-Mart customers in Everett, Washington. Everett is the site of the largest pulp mill facility in North America, and the only site where virgin pulp arrives directly from endangered forests and leaves as Kleenex brand tissue. Wal-Mart is Kimberly-Clark's largest single customer and Greenpeace is initiating a dialog with their management to pressure Kimberly-Clark to stop destroying ancient forests.
