Date: 2024-12-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00018353
Activism: SumOfUs
Addressing the unsustainability of COSTCO
Canada’s boreal forests are being flushed down the toilet and retail giant Costco’s Kirkland brand is one of the worst offenders. ... It’s time for Costco to clean up its act.
Peter Burgess
Amelia Meister, SumOfUs
9:09 AM (2 hours ago) to me
Canada’s boreal forests are being flushed down the toilet and retail giant Costco’s Kirkland brand is one of the worst offenders. It’s time for Costco to clean up its act.
Peter,
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 report from our friends at the NRDC and Stand.earth, Costco’s Kirkland brand is one of the worst offenders. It's cutting down a million trees a year from the boreal forest -- just to be flushed away.
Toilet paper is Costco's biggest selling item so committing to stop boreal forest sourcing, and more recycled content, would save millions of trees a year.
We have the attention of the CEO and are heading to a big meeting next week. Your signature today will prove that there is global opposition to Costco's irresponsible practices.
Tell Costco to be responsible to the planet and stop cutting down the boreal forest for toilet paper.
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. Other corporations make 100% post-consumer recycled toilet paper and provide a great alternative. It’s time that Costco did the same.
Together, with our friends at the NRDC and Stand.earth, SumOfUs is working to shift the entire tissue industry to protect our forests and mitigate climate change.
SumOfUs has forced corporations to use environmentally friendly solutions before. When we found that out Starbucks hadn’t kept 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! Starbucks committed to produce 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?
Thanks for all that you do,
Amelia and the team at SumOfUs
More information: Wiped out: America's love of luxury toilet paper is destroying Canadian forests, The Guardian, 01 March 2019 The Issue with Tissue: How the U.S. Is Flushing Forests Away, NRDC, 20 February 2019