What's In Your TISSUE Paper?

With cold and flu season in full swing, Greenpeace released its Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide, a credit card-sized shopping guide that helps consumers find the greenest household paper products. In the guide, Greenpeace gives a thumbs up to brands Green Forest, Natural Value and Seventh Generation, while recommending that shoppers avoid products like Kleenex, Cottonelle, Charmin, and Angel Soft.

Greenpeace recommends products that meet three important environmental benchmarks: they are made from 100 percent overall recycled content, a minimum of which is 50 percent post-consumer recycled content, and are not bleached with chlorine or toxic chlorine compounds. The guide rates facial tissues, paper towels, toilet paper, and paper napkins.

"Tissue products that are made from recycled content help to reduce our impact on ancient forests, protecting forest ecosystems and wildlife," said Greenpeace Forest Campaigner Lindsey Allen. "By using our guide and voting with their dollars, shoppers can help save Endangered Forests."

Green Forest is an example of a responsible company making tissue products. All Green Forest products are made from 100 percent recycled paper, are whitened without chlorine, and are produced from a minimum of 90 percent post-consumer recycled paper.

"Our company's primary goal is to make truly environmentally friendly products that also work well for the consumer, while being profitable," said Allen Stedman, President of Planet Inc., manufacturers of Green Forest paper. "We want to make a difference in the marketplace, and we're delighted that Greenpeace has recognized our efforts."

One company that Greenpeace says can do much better is Kimberly-Clark, the largest tissue product company in the world with net sales in 2007 of over $18 billion dollars. Yet despite their large market share, Kimberly-Clark has not used its influence to show the industry how to be greener. Greenpeace gave an "Avoid" rating to Kimberly-Clark's household paper product brands Kleenex, Scott, Cottonelle, and Viva.

Editors Note: This is the first installment in an 8 week "What's In Your Paper?" series on the Paper Planet focusing on specific sectors of the paper industry or paper from specific Endangered Forest regions. Subscribe or check back each Wednesday for a new posting in this series.