A-CHOO! CANADIAN TREES, EH?

Monday, January 30, 2006
A-CHOO! CANADIAN TREES, EH?
A cyber friend/acquaintance of mine, Rochelle, with whom I have cyber discussions focusing on toilet-related issues among other topics in a humor discussion forum , brought up something interesting today. The topic is paper and how it's acquired in its basic form.

It was indeed fortuitous for me as a Canadian, to have Rochelle come accross this this invaluable piece. Little did I know that our neighbors south of the border were abusing Canadian trees by the mere act of blowing their noses AND wiping them, among other things!

As a person who buys the cheapest tissues at Costco in bulk, I checked my box of Scotties (the cheapest on sale) to see if there was any indication which type of trees came from which country before the actual manufacturing process. As far as I could see there was no background information mentioned on the sides, underneath or on top of the box save for a very attractive blue/green and white check pattern covering the entire surface . None of the dozen or more boxes provided any information regarding the tree types and/od the forest from which they orginated. So conducted some research and guess what? Scotties are made by none other than Kimberley Clark who also make:

- Kleenex
- Huggies
- Pull Ups
- Kotex

According to its site (Kimberley Clark):

"K-C is Committed to Preserving Ecologically Significant Old Growth Forests With the spin-off of Neenah Paper, Inc., in 2004, we no longer own or manage any forest lands in North America. We continue to adhere, however, to a corporate policy that prohibits the use of fiber from virgin rainforests or ecologically significant old
growth areas, including designated areas in Canada's Boreal Forest."

Further more:

"The vast majority of fiber we purchasecomes from residual waste (sawdust and chips) from the lumber production process. Globally less than 15% of Kimberly-Clark's total fiber use is sourced from the Canadian Boreal forest. The small percentage of
Boreal fiber we use is harvested responsibly and is promptly reforested. Based on further data from the Canadian Forest Service and from the Canadian Boreal Initiative, Kimberly-Clark purchases just 3.5% of the pulp and 1.3% of all Boreal region forest products that include lumber,pulp and newsprint."

Actually, it's all our fault in the end. Seems that North Americans want soft - really soft - tissues to blow our noses and for the "other end" of the equation requiring virgin lumber.

Go figure that some lumber is virgin! This is important stuff you wanna know about!

IMHO - there is a possible solution to this issue that would make everyone happy, especially the environmentalists. How about - wait for it - using handkerchiefs! Remember those squares of cotton that were kept in our pockets and sleeves and whipped out over and over again when needed? Of course they do tend to stay wet for a period of time, but if left to dry on a surface they'll handle the job more than adequately. There could be a problem, however, as to where to let them dry could be an issue, though, especially in an office setting.

Placing it top of a printer and allowing the warm of the printing process to dry it is one possible solution. It won't look very appealing to the people who want to use the machine but it's a small price to pay to help save the forests.
Or... it could be hung on the back of a spare chair in the office...
Or... perhaps taped to the side of the computer screen.
Or...tacked on to a bulletin board and left out to dry

Now about those sanitary napkins and disposable diapers...


www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/29/MNGMHGVCF11.DTL