Ellen Montgomery
Director, Public Lands Campaign, Environment America Research & Policy Center
Statement: Procter & Gamble suppliers are degrading Canada’s boreal forest
Media Contacts
Report shows Procter & Gamble’s pulp suppliers are sourcing from critical caribou habitat
Environment America
DENVER –A report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) assessed the sourcing practices of Procter and Gamble’s major wood pulp suppliers, Domtar, Aditya Birla Group and Resolute Forest Products. NRDC found that logging feeding the company’s mills comes from areas of the forest containing critical habitat for endangered caribou. This species’ habitat is important for combating climate change because these areas store so much carbon. Procter & Gamble’s household paper products, Charmin’, Bounty and Puffs, are all made using wood pulp from the boreal forest in Canada. Along with being a habitat for caribou, the boreal forest is home to packs of wolves, lynx and billions of migratory birds.
So much of the logging supplying the three companies included in the report comes much from non-sustainably managed forests, that if the wood they sourced in a single year was converted to “2 x 4” boards and laid end to end, the boards would reach to the moon and back twice. The total wood sourced by these three companies in non-sustainably managed forests is more than 5 million cubic meters per year.
Environment America Public Lands Campaign Director Ellen Montgomery issued the following statement:
“The boreal forest is home to billions of birds and endangered caribou and the idea that it is being logged at all, much less unsustainably, is tragic. The most absurd thing we could be doing in the face of a looming global biodiversity crisis is chopping down hundred-year-old trees and turning them into toilet paper.
“For the sake of the boreal caribou and the billions of birds that make their home in the boreal forest, Procter & Gamble needs to move away using suppliers that log old growth forests. They could do this by speeding up their timeline for incorporating recycled and forest-free fibers into their products.”
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