Activist shareholders target Kimberly-Clark pulp sources

[Texas] The groups will offer a resolution at Kimberly-Clark’s shareholder meeting Thursday calling on the company to report by Nov. 1 on whether it could phase out the use of fiber from old-growth Canadian forests that environmentalists say are threatened by clear-cutting operations. Greenpeace estimates that Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex tissues and Huggies diapers, gets 20 to 30 percent of its pulp from boreal forests in Canada. Kimberly-Clark’s directors unanimously recommended that shareholders reject the Greenpeace-backed resolution. The company said it only buys fiber from suppliers that use sustainable forestry practices and has a policy against using wood from virgin rain forests or certain old-growth areas of Indonesia and Canada. It opposes an effort by environmentalists to rely on a single group, the Forest Stewardship Council. It says the supply of timber approved by the stewardship council isn’t large enough to meet its pulp needs. Less than 30 percent of Kimberly-Clark’s fiber comes from recycling.