Monday, January 17, 2011

Kimberly Clark - it ain't that bad anymore.

A little sidetrack to environmental concerns today on my blog. After the last series of posts on the future (I'll have more on that in, well, the future) there's not much I have to say about it at the moment and this is, after all, still my "random blog about what's going through my head".

What prompted this post was the fact that I grabbed a box of tissues ("kleenex") form the supply closet at work and suddenly realized that they were the Scotties brand, made by Kimberly Clark (makers of kleenex, scotties, huggies, etc). Now, it's been driven deep into my head that Kimberly Clark is an evil company and that they use virgin wood (non-recycled) and clear-cut the amazonian and the Boreal forests right here in my backyard. My wife being very environmentalist (aka "tree-hugger" which is fitting here), this is an issue for me. I couldn't just stand there with part of Earth's lungs and not do something about it.

But before I went screaming in the HR office going on an on about how KC were evil and we should not buy products that destroy the environment (poor HR rep would have had to deal with a little bit of my wife's crazyness through me, there!), I decided to do a little bit of research. In the past, "facts" given to me by my wife sometimes end up being taken from email chain letters and very unreliable sources, so I do my research now.

Reality turned out to be that she was right in thinking Kimberly Clark WAS a very bad company in regards to environmental responsibility - but today this is no longer the case. After a lot of bitching an moaning campaigning by environmental groups such as Greenpeace, KC finally decided, in 2008, to completely re-think their position and to start being responsible for their actions.

From 2008, 98 percent of the wood pulp Kimberly-Clark bought globally came from suppliers or forestlands that have sustainability certifications of some sort (see the wikipedia page on Kimberly Clark). Not only does this make me not guilty of using these Scotties tissues, it also make me and my wife less guilty of using 3 packs of Huggies disposable diapers, since they're also made by KC.

So now you, the reader, knows that you can safely buy all the brands made by Kimberly Clark without the loss of karma points you thought went with it. Visit KC's sustainability page to see what they have to say about it, if you want.

This message was paid for in part by my desire to prove my wife wrong. It was not paid for in any way, shape or form by Kimberly Clark :P