Greenpeace Sticks It To Toshiba: Company Has No Paper Policy

Update: Toshiba pulled the plug on its campaign the day after this article appeared. See 9 Lessons from Toshiba's No-Print Day Debacle for the full story.
 
Toshiba's misleading "No-Print Day" campaign may be an attempt to distract us from the company's dismal environmental record.

Greenpeace ranks the company tied for #13, out of 15 major manufacturers, in the latest edition of its annual Guide to Greener Electronics.

Toshiba's score of only 2.8 on a scale of 10 is actually an improvement over the previous year, when Greenpeace penalized it for backtracking on a previous commitment to remove certain hazardous materials from its PCs -- and lying about it.

But here's the kicker: The Greenpeace report says Toshiba "fails to score on paper sourcing as it does not have a paper procurement policy which excludes suppliers that are involved in deforestation and illegal logging."

Green Groups Turn the Heat Down on National Geographic But Up on KFC

Please see also the May 30, 2012 follow up to this article, The Recycled Debate: Can We 'Get Beyond the Stereotypical Industry-Environmental Relationship'?, where Locantore and industry pundit BoSacks debate the green-ness of recycled paper.

The environmental group that aimed a "Practice What You Print" campaign against National Geographic for not using recycled paper says it is now engaged in "productive discussions" with the magazine.

Frank Locantore, director of the Better Paper Project, revealed the discussions in a comment today on Dead Tree Edition's article, What Exactly Is Environmentally Preferable Paper? Acknowledging that there is more to "green" paper than recycled content, he called for "a broad cross-section of stakeholders" to establish measurements that will lead to making paper more environmentally friendly.

Here is Frank's comment in its entirety:

I've wanted to post a comment to this blog for a long time now. But, there is so much here to comment on that it has been hard to figure out where to begin. First, I want to thank DTE for repeatedly trying to get a conversation going about this. My hope is that the conversation finds a different venue than on-line commenting. It is really difficult to substantially and meaningfully discuss this issue without the benefit of being in the same room with one another.

My three comments are these:

Greenpeace Is Back, But Time Warner Looks the Other Way

Nearly 16 years to the day after protesters hung a "Take The Poison Out Of Paper" banner on the TIME-Life building, Time Warner's paper-buying practices were blasted once again this week by Greenpeace.

But two Time Warner properties, TIME magazine and CNN, published articles about the Greenpeace study that failed to mention its listing of Time Warner's CNN Traveller magazine as one of the brands that "prop up Sinar Mas" by buying from its Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) division.

Other magazines singled out for criticism in "How Sinar Mas Is Pulping the Planet" on Tuesday include three Hearst brands (Esquire, Marie Claire, and Cosmo Girl) and Hachette Filipacchi's Elle -- though it wasn't clear whether Greenpeace was pointing the finger at those companies or at content licensees who publish Asian-language editions.

But the copy of CNN Traveller shown in the report is clearly an English-language edition, and the magazine's Web site indicates that the Asian edition is published by CNN.

The TIME article notes that Greenpeace "singles out some of APP's big global customers" like WalMart, Hewlett Packard, and KFC. But nowhere does the article mention Time's UK-based sister publication. And the CNN story doesn't list any of the companies that Greenpeace criticizes for buying from the Sinar Mas empire, which has repeatedly been accused of massive deforestation in Indonesia.

On July 11, 1994, three Greenpeace activists gained international media attention by climbing Time Inc.'s headquarters in New York and hanging a banner saying "TIME: Chlorine Kills -- Take The Poison Out of Paper". Since then, the Time Inc. branch of Time Warner has focused on studying the environmental impact of magazine paper and working with its suppliers to reduce that impact.

Related articles:

• Illegal Logging in Indonesia: Not Funny "The country’s enforcement of logging laws is a joke."
• Three, or Maybe Four, Green Magazine Pioneers: Both Time Inc. and Hearst have been green leaders in the U.S. magazine industry.
• Marcal Challenges the Green-ness of Greenpeace: Paper company accuses Greenpeace of setting its standards for paper too low.

Environmental Groups Make Surprising Concessions in Canadian Forest Deal

The landmark truce announced yesterday by Canadian forestry companies and green groups represents a new direction for the environmental movement.

It’s surprising enough that the former enemies signed a deal involving forestry practices and conservation for an area of the Canadian boreal forest larger than Texas.

Even more stunning is that radical environmental groups like Greenpeace and ForestEthics signed an agreement that calls for “policies and investments that improve the competitiveness of the Canadian forest sector” and “improved prosperity of the Canadian forest sector and the communities that depend on it.” That’s a big switch from contentions that no logging should occur in ecologically sensitive boreal (sub-arctic) forests.

The agreement also recognizes the legitimacy of the industry-backed Sustainable Forestry Initiative in addition to the rival Forest Stewardship Council. (See The Boreal Forest Deal and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative for more on this subject.) Greenpeace has urged its supporters to “look for the FSC label” when buying forest products, and the two groups sponsored a study that concluded only FSC “represents a viable system that delivers positive results on the ground and in the communities where it matters most” and therefore is “the only forest certification system that is broadly supported by conservation groups."

The nine environmental groups also committed to calling off any “do not buy” campaigns targeted at customers of the signatory forest-products companies. ForestEthics is perhaps best known for its successful guerilla-theater-style Victoria’s Dirty Secret campaign. More recent efforts involving the boreal forest have targeted Sears and Kimberly-Clark.

In return, the forest-products companies agreed to “the suspension of logging on nearly 29 million hectares [two-thirds the size of California] of Boreal Forest representing virtually all Boreal caribou habitat within company tenures.” Caribou habitat is often viewed as a rough proxy for boreal forests that are relatively undisturbed by human activity.

The 21 forestry companies (including AbitibiBowater, Kruger, NewPage, and Weyerhaeuser) also committed to working with the green groups and an independent panel of scientists to develop “best practices for biomass harvesting” and then to follow those practices, backed up by third-party audits.

A goal of the agreement is to make Canada “a world leader in conservation and protection of Boreal biodiversity through a mix of conservation measures, the completion of a protected areas network, and the implementation of third-party certification of sustainable forest management practices.”

The agreement offers hope that the environmental movement is growing up and learning to see the big picture. It makes far more environmental sense to work with relatively responsible companies in a well-regulated country like Canada than to cause the demand for paper and other forest products to shift to environmental nightmares like Indonesia.

How the deal will actually work in practice is not entirely clear. Yesterday’s news release, “highlights” document, and abridged description of the agreement left some key questions unanswered:

• Show me the money: Who will foot the bill for the studies, audits, and other activities called for in the agreement? And will the environmental groups receive any direct compensation in return for dropping the kinds of high-profile campaigns that can be good for fundraising?
• What will happen to forestry companies that log the Canadian boreal forest but did not sign the agreement? Will they, and their customers, face pressure to sign?
• Will other environmental groups go along with the agreement? Or will some claim it doesn’t go far enough and start new “do not buy” campaigns against the signatory companies?
• Will ForestEthics retire Candace the Caribou, the character who often appears at protests of boreal-forest logging? Or will she start appearing at rallies against the destruction of the boreal forest by the extraction of oil from Canadian tar sands?
• We know from that scholarly movie “Ghost Busters” that one sign of “a disaster of biblical proportions” is dogs and cats living in peace. Does that mean we should be worried when environmentalists and loggers hold hands, sing “Kum Ba Yah” and agree to bury the hatchet?

Related articles:

• Marcal Challenges the Green-ness of Greenpeace: A paper company accused Greenpeace of selling out by setting its standards for eco-friendly paper too low and for backing off on its efforts to protect Canada's boreal forest.
• The Great Forest Certification War: ForestEthics accused the Sustainable Forestry Initiative of tax fraud and greenwashing; SFI fired back.

Marcal Challenges the Green-ness of Greenpeace

A journalist friend notes that an article headlined "Dog Bites Man" isn't much of a story, but that "Man Bites Dog" is big news.

Here's a true man-bites-dog story: A paper company is accusing Greenpeace of selling out by setting its standards for eco-friendly paper too low and for backing off on its efforts to protect Canada's boreal forest. This is the same Greenpeace that has used various tactics to embarrass such companies as Victoria's Secret, Sears, and AbitibiBowater over logging in the boreal.

Marcal Paper's criticism of Greenpeace comes barely a week after members of the environmental group were arrested while blocking the entrance to Quebec's Natural Resources Department to protest boreal logging.

The New Jersey-based maker of 100%-recycled toilet paper was commenting on Greenpeace's announcement Thursday that it was ending its "Kleercut" campaign against Kimberly-Clark. Greenpeace agreed to a truce because the maker of Kleenex promised that, by the end of 2011, at least 40% of its tissue fiber will be either recycled or FSC certified.

"Since when is 40 percent a passing grade?" Tim Spring, Marcal CEO, said in a statement issued yesterday. "While I understand the negotiating process, Greenpeace needs to rethink these standards. There is no excuse to make paper from anything but 100 percent recycled fiber, especially when you consider that paper takes up a quarter of our landfill space today."

"It is unnecessary to kill even a single additional tree to manufacture toilet paper, facial tissue, napkins or paper towels," Marcal's statement says.

So what happens next? Here's a hint from Greenpeace's Web site: "Did you know that K-C competitors Georgia Pacific and Procter & Gamble currently have policies that fail to protect the world’s forests?"