Tell Costco: protect the boreal forests. Use recycled pulp in your toilet paper

Toilet paper is destroying Canada’s vast and majestic old-growth Boreal forests, worsening climate change, endangering wildlife, and affecting hundreds of Indigenous communities across the country, and there’s no good reason this should be happening.

According to a new report from NRDC and Stand.earth, Costco’s Kirkland brand is one of the worst offenders. It uses 100% virgin pulp when it could be using recycled materials and protecting the forests instead.

Other major tissue producers like Kimberly-Clark, who make Cottonelle, have plans to cut virgin pulp content in half by 2025 and stop millions of acres of pristine boreal forest from being flushed down the toilet. So why is Costco doing nothing?

Toilet paper is Costco's biggest selling item so committing to more recycled content would make a major difference to the boreal forests. Not only that, it would pile on the pressure for stubborn tissue giants like Proctor and Gamble to get on board with making the change. Together we can change the entire tissue industry and protect the precious boreal forests.

Tell Costco to be responsible to the planet and switch to minimum 50% post-consumer recycled materials!

The Canadian boreal forest is the largest intact forest in the world, covering almost 60% of Canada and home to 600 Indigenous communities. The forest is a critical proponent in the fight against climate change, as it stores the carbon equivalent of nearly twice the world’s recoverable oil reserves in its soil.

Over the last twenty years, 28 million acres of Canadian boreal forest have been cut down to make toilet paper, roughly the size of Pennsylvania.

Toilet paper companies don’t have to use virgin pulp. Corporations like Seventh Generation make 100% post-consumer recycled toilet paper and provide a great alternative. It’s time that Costco did the same.

SumOfUs has helped force corporations to use environmentally friendly solutions before. When Starbucks didn't keep its promise to serve a 100% recyclable paper cup, almost 400,000 members just like yourself pressured the world’s largest corporate coffee chain to make good on their promise. And it worked! Working alongside groups like Stand.earth, Starbucks committed to producing a fully recyclable and compostable cup within the next three years.

With Costco, there’s no time to lose. It’s time for it to end its wasteful and destructive practices, and finally put the people and the planet ahead of its own profits.

Will you call on Costco to switch to minimum 50% post-consumer recycled materials?

- Sum of Us

More information

The Issue with Tissue: How the U.S. Is Flushing Forests Away - NRDC. 20 February 2019.

Wiped out: America's love of luxury toilet paper is destroying Canadian forests - The Guardian. 1 March 2019.

Our largest intact old-growth forest is turning into toilet paper

Even as NRDC fights in scores of courtrooms to save our environment from the Trump administration, we continue to wage many other important campaigns as well. Today, I want to update you on our longstanding effort to protect Canada's spectacular boreal forest from destruction at the hands of giant timber and consumer product companies.

1. The Big Picture:

• Canada's boreal forest is our planet's largest intact old-growth forest. But logging, oil, gas, and mining companies are clearing more than one million acres each year. That's more than seven NHL hockey rinks a minute, threatening hundreds of Indigenous communities, iconic caribou, and billions of migratory birds, all of which call this ancient forest home.
• As for the ancient trees? Many of them are being turned into toilet paper, paper towels, and facial tissues.

2. Why It Matters:

• Know what else calls the boreal forest home?
• 300 billion tons of carbon, stored in the boreal region's soils, plants, and wetlands. That's equal to more than three decades' worth of fossil fuel emissions. And it means every acre exploited by industry makes climate change even worse — not to mention putting in peril the people and wildlife who've thrived in the boreal for centuries.

3. What We're Doing:

• Protecting the world's largest old-growth forest takes sustained commitment. But NRDC has been in the fight for two decades — and as we round the bend into 2019, we're more committed than ever to:
  • Pressuring the Canadian government to work with Indigenous communities to protect the boreal forest from unsustainable logging and save the threatened boreal caribou — before it's too late.
  • Turning up the heat on companies like Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and others to say no to making throwaway tissue products from trees that come from the boreal forest, and urging these companies to use recycled content instead.
  • Educating consumers on what products to avoid that are made with boreal wood.

4. Learn More:

• See what the boreal forest looks like. Check out this video to grasp the full beauty of the boreal forest and learn more about how carbon sinks — like the boreal — work and why they're critical.
• Learn about the ways in which Indigenous Peoples are leading the fight to protect their forest homelands. Meet the Innu forester working to save Canada's boreal forest.
• Discover what it's like to study one of North America's most elusive mammals. Meet the wildlife ecologist who is researching ways to help boreal caribou survive.
• Find out which companies are calling for protection of Canada's boreal forest. Read the letter from industry executives urging the Canadian government to step up and take bold steps to save the boreal forest.

Stay tuned! We'll keep you updated on our fight to protect the boreal forest. But in the meantime, get even more info at NRDC's boreal forest headquarters.

- Rhea Suh, President, NRDC