Tell Procter & Gamble to Stop Flushing our Forests

Join our Digital Week of Action

Forests

Our digital Week of Action is being coordinated by Environment America Associate Sammy Herdman

Download the toolkit here.

 

The Canadian boreal forest absorbs enough carbon each year to offset the global warming pollution of 24 million cars. It’s home to endangered caribou, the Canadian lynx, the snowshoe hare, and billions of birds. It has also been home for and provided resources for Indigenous communities for millennia. But unfortunately, we’re losing the boreal at a rate of one and a half football fields per minute. Where vast swaths of biodiverse forests once stood, millions of acres are now degraded, left as fields of tree trunks interspersed with logging roads and saplings. The trees that once stood there formerly performed essential ecosystem services and absorbed carbon emissions. Now, they have been pulped to create tissues and toilet paper.

From Sept. 20–25, 2021, Environment America Research & Policy Center is organizing consumers across the U.S. to tell Procter & Gamble to stop using the intact boreal forest to make tissues and toilet paper. As one of the largest tissue producers in the country, Procter & Gamble could lead the way in moving toward a sustainable supply chain—but they continue to use virgin wood fiber because it’s what they believe their customers prefer. Procter & Gamble has some of the best known tissue products, including Charmin, Bounty and Puffs, and some of the worst policies. The company received a failing grade in an NRDC report, “The Issue With Tissue.” Essentially, Procter & Gamble is flushing our future.

Sign up here to participate in our digital week of action from Sept. 20 – 25, 2021.

We’ll be putting pressure on P&G to make commitments to reduce the logging in their supply chain, which would also help to solve climate change. We’ll be collecting petition signatures, emailing them about birds that rely on the boreal and writing letters to the editor.

Our Digital Week of Action is just weeks before Procter & Gamble’s annual shareholder meeting on October 12, 2021. Along with other environmental groups, we are encouraging P&G shareholders not to re-elect Angela Braly, chair of the Governance & Public Responsibility Committee during this year’s shareholder meeting. Ms. Braly has chaired P&G’s Governance & Public Responsibility Committee for five years, and is the board member with primary responsibility for addressing shareholder proposals like the one that passed last year urging the company to address deforestation and degradation. So we’re coordinating a “tweet storm” to call on shareholders to vote her off Procter & Gamble’s board.

Join us during our Digital Week of Action to tell Procter & Gamble to stop flushing our forests. Choose one, two or four of the below actions to participate! Access our full toolkit for more information about each of these actions. Download the toolkit here.

  1. Sign our petition. We’re collecting as many signatures as possible to show P&G that their American customers care about the boreal forest and denounce P&G’s wasteful tree-to-toilet pipeline.

  2. Join the Email Bird Blast. Select your favorite bird that breeds in the boreal forest, and send an email with a bird photo to Charmin or Bounty. Critical bird habitat should not be logged to make toilet paper and paper towels!

  3. Build your own Letter to the Editor. Using the provided bulleted messaging points and our templates as guides. Pick the points that are most compelling to you, personalize your letter and send it to your local newspaper.

  4. Tweet. On Wednesday, September 22, 2021, we’re coordinating a tweet storm targeted at Procter & Gamble and their shareholders. Use our templates or craft your own tweet to participate.

Topics
Authors

Ellen Montgomery

Director, Public Lands Campaign, Environment America Research & Policy Center

Ellen runs campaigns to protect America's beautiful places, from local beachfronts to remote mountain peaks. Prior to her current role, Ellen worked as the organizing director for Environment America’s Climate Defenders campaign. Ellen lives in Denver, where she likes to hike in Colorado's mountains.

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