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Tissue Test: Is Yours Recycled?

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Nicholas Spangler, The Miami Herald

Mar. 15--She stood outside the Miami Beach Convention Center under a giant banner accusing Kimberly-Clark, maker of Kleenex, of destroying ancient forests. It was just past eight in the morning on Tuesday and tissue professionals were streaming past for the opening talk of Tissue World Americas 2006.

There were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands -- enough to make our city, for these next few precious days, the absolute center of the tissue world and the universe beyond. The professionals were eager to catch Innovation = A Healthy Trend For Tissue, and most did not, particularly, have a moment. Not at all. Pam approached them with two unlabeled tissue boxes and they sprint-walked past, shaking their heads NO.

Kimberly-Clark is the largest manufacturer of tissue products in the world; less than 19 percent of the paper it uses for tissue comes from recycled sources, says the Greenpeace news release, and much of the rest from North American forests.

One purpose of the Greenpeace tissue test is to suggest that Kleenex would sell just fine if it left the forests alone: if, say, customers can't tell the difference between tissue made from recycled paper and Kleenex made from new.

In this respect, Tissue World was a horrible place to conduct testing.

"I've spent the last 35 years of my life in tissue mills," said a chemical engineer on a cigarette break. "Of course I know the difference."

"Oh yeah," an engineer from Finland said. "But I'm a paper science engineer. This is what I do."

"I have a second question," Pam said. "Which one would you be more likely to buy if this one is recycled, and this one is made from destroyed ancient-growth forests?"

"What do you think, you're going to cut down every tree in the world and not have a fiber source?" countered a marketing manager smoking with the chemical engineer. "That doesn't make business sense. Believe me, if we could make the recycled as good as virgin sheet, we would. We'd be rich men."

The tissue test was a propaganda failure. Even a Miami Dade College student on her way to English class could tell the difference, and she chose the Kleenex. "So you don't care that old-growth forests are being destroyed?" Pam asked.

"I do care, but this one is softer," she said. "Kind of delicate. The other one is kind of rough, like hard paper."

Somewhere inside Tissue World, Kimberly-Clark bigwigs were gloating.

Outside, the sun rose to eye-watering intensity. The banner didn't provide much shade. Pam considered taking a water break. But there was a French shipping executive, a smiling young man of conscience bound for the Seatrade Cruise Shipping Convention.

"I have kids and I buy lots of Kleenex," he said, fingering one of the recycled tissues. "Where do I find these?"

Pam didn't know, but she was sure she could find out.

If you have a story idea, e-mail nspangler@MiamiHerald.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Miami Herald

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Miami Herald

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