• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

U.S. Catalogue Publisher Hopes Economic Pressure Improves Alta. Conservation

Posted on: Monday, 16 July 2007, 21:19 CDT

By BOB WEBER

EDMONTON (CP) - Alberta's resource companies are hearing a familiar pitch from an unfamiliar source this week as the U.S. publisher of the Victoria's Secret catalogue tries to persuade Alberta's politicians and resource industry that green business can be good business.

"We're hoping to bring some data to the table that is coming from a neutral source to hopefully influence some of the outcomes up here around paper practices and logging practices," said Tom Katzenmeyer of Limited Brands, publisher of the Victoria's Secret catalogue, the largest catalogue in the United States.

It's part of a growing effort by environmentalists to shape provincial policy using economic pressure from customers who use the province's products.

Katzenmeyer, along with Alberta environmentalists, is meeting with provincial, forestry and energy industry representatives in an effort to improve conservation practices along the Rocky Mountain Foothills.

He's brought along a report by Seattle-based biologist James Strittholt that suggests a series of areas along the foothills that retain high conservation values, such as grizzly bear or woodland caribou habitat, old-growth forest or unique plant and animal communities.

"We found a lot of heavy impacts, but we found a lot of conservation values as well," said Strittholt, of the non-profit Conservation Biology Institute.

Last year, after a intensive campaign by U.S. environmental groups, Limited Brands decided to stop buying wood pulp from several western Canadian plants, including the West Fraser plant in Alberta. The decision also affected pulp plants in British Columbia.

Industry sources say Limited Brands buys about $100 million worth of wood pulp a year to publish the 360 million copies of the Victoria's Secret lingerie catalogue. That catalogue is now printed on paper that is 10 per cent either recycled or from forestry companies that boast Forest Stewardship Council certification.

On Monday, Katzenmeyer said the company would love to reopen business links in the province - if forestry and conservation practices were changed to meet the company's new requirements.

"This can be an economically driven solution," he said. "We're going to continue publishing catalogues and we'd love to do business up here."

Jason Chance of Alberta Energy confirmed a meeting took place Monday.

"We're always open to different views on energy development," he said.

Alberta environmentalists have long complained that only 1.2 per cent of the vast foothills region is protected from resource development. Glen Semenchuk of the Federation of Alberta Naturalists acknowledged the visit from Limited Brands is part of a deliberate strategy to try to shape Alberta policy using consumer pressure.

"When you hear (criticism) at home, you don't believe it," he said. "If somebody comes in from outside, you do."

Alberta's energy industry came in for a bit of that recently, when one of the largest environmental organizations in the U.S. held a news conference in Washington, D.C., to take aim at the backbone of the province's energy prosperity.

The Natural Resources Defence Council called the Alberta oilsands "dirty" and "bottom-of-the-barrel" energy - a criticism that drew a vigorous response from Premier Ed Stelmach.

The oilsands are also under attack in Europe, where the World Wildlife Fund in the United Kingdom recently released a report blaming oilsands expansion for Canada's failure to live up to its Kyoto commitments.

Such pressure may increase. The U.S.-based group Forest Ethics, which helped negotiate the Limited Brands deal, is now talking with other major catalogues publishers about where their pulp comes from.

Those publishers include Land's End and L.L. Bean, said Forest Ethics spokesman Lafcadio Cortesi.

"If the government of Alberta and the forestry industry don't wake up to a new reality - that is, environment matters - that business is going to dry up," he said.

Source: Canadian Press

More News in this Category