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Poor practices that are wiping out forests

The production of toilet paper can be extremely damaging to the environment

A new WWF assessment shows that while some of Europe's leading tissue manufacturers have made improvements to their environmental performances, many gaps remain.

We can't let so much waste continue to happen. Everyday, about 270,000 trees are flushed down the drain or end up as garbage all over the world. In Europe, 200,000 truckloads of tissue products are consumed every year. Their final destination? Toilet or landfills.

As part of its annual environmental performance assessment, five "giant" tissue manufacturers that make up 75% of the European market - Georgia-Pacific, Kimberly-Clark, Metsa Tissue, Procter & Gamble and SCA Tissue - were scored by WWF across a range of criteria, including:

levels of recycled content
wood sourcing practices
pollution control and
transparency.

[Please click to enlarge] Scoring the tissue giants

Results of WWF’s 2006 score of the “Tissue Giants”

Read the full results (PDF format) | Press release

Recycled tissue? think again

Most of the tissue products available in shops today are made of virgin fibres and not recycled content. In Europe the “Tissue giants”, the 5 companies who supply the majority of the European market, are producing alarmingly low levels of recycled products.

But recycling is not the only problem. Unsustainable and illegal logging, irresponsible plantation establishment and management, and the use of chemicals to bleach tissue all contribute to this environmental damage.

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