PSU group on toilet paper trail

By Anne Danahy

At the top of a Penn State group’s agenda is something to which most students probably don’t give much thought: Toilet paper.

The group wants the university to stop buying tissue and toilet paper from Kimberly-Clark, a company the students say sells products containing paper from trees in the Boreal forest in Canada. Penn State’s contract with Kimberly- Clark ends in June, and the students behind the “Kleercut” campaign are pushing the university to buy products from a different company that are made with 100 percent recycled fiber.

The group formed last year, and the university has been looking into its options, including testing various brands and working with a class in the Smeal College of Business on guidelines for buying paper products. Joyce Haney, director of procurement services, said Penn State will probably extend its contract with Kimberly- Clark for a month while it decides how to proceed. She said the contract specifications include that any paper the university buys can’t contain fiber from the Boreal forest.

“For the most part, the EcoAction students and the university have more in common than they do differences. Our goal is the same: To find a janitorial paper for the university that’s the most environmentally friendly,” Haney said.

But, she said, Penn State has other factors to consider, including price and performance. Penn State spends about $500,000 a year on janitorial paper for the entire university.

Houston-based Kimberly- Clark’s brands include Kleenex, Scott, Cottonelle and Viva.

Tina Robinson, a senior in the College of Agricultural Sciences, said that Kimberly-Clark is linked to forest destruction in the Boreal forest. She said her group wants Penn State to become the first university in the Big 10 to stop using products from the company.

“I know Penn State likes to be a leader,” Robinson said.

She said other products, made from recycled material that has a high post-consumer content, are available, and pointed to other universities that have changed suppliers. American University, in Washington, D.C., for example, switched its vendor about two years ago. According to a spokeswoman, the move was part of a sustainability effort.

Haney said Penn State has been testing brands, but so far few of the papers that pass quality tests are made by companies that don’t use any fiber from the Boreal forest. She said that Kimberly-Clark has received environmental stewardship awards and that the university wants to look at the big picture for the company that it buys from, which means overall environmental efforts, not just one factor.

In an e-mailed statement, Kimberly- Clark spokesman Dave Dickson said the company “has one of the most progressive fiber policies in the tissue industry. In fact, at the end of 2008, 98 (percent) of the virgin fiber and wood pulp we purchased was sourced from suppliers certified to one of five internationally recognized sustainable forestry systems, marking the fourth consecutive year that we have increased the use of certified fiber on a global basis.”

The initiative at Penn State is part of larger campaign by Green-peace. The environmental organization has a tissue and toilet paper rating based on whether brands are made from 100 percent recycled materials and other factors.

Anne Danahy can be reached at 231-4648.