12/2: Expose Victoria's Dirty Secret!

Victoria's Secret buys its catalogue paper from International Paper, the world's largest forest products company. IP owns Vancouver-based Weldwood, which logs on a forest management area near Hinton. ForestEthics calls the region an endangered forest. They want 25 per cent of it to be protected.
http://www.wbcsd.ch/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MTA2NTQ

About 25 per cent of the pulp that is used to make the coated paper in the catalogues comes from forests near Hinton, Alta., according to San Francisco-based ForestEthics. The pulp mill is in a region rich in wildlife and old growth forest, it said.

That makes Victoria's Secret a major customer of International Paper Co., whose Canadian unit, Weldwood of Canada Ltd., has cutting rights in the Hinton region. An International Paper spokeswoman said that while some pulp used to produce the catalogues comes from the Hinton area, the forest in the region cannot be considered endangered.

ForestEthics has turned its attention to Victoria's Secret in part because it is a major paper consumer, printing more than 395 million copies a year of its catalogues, ForestEthics said in a news release announcing its latest campaign.

"We are doing everything we can to raise awareness of their purchasing policies," said Tzeporah Berman, program director at ForestEthics, whose previous targets have included Staples Inc. and the Home Depot Inc. The group was formed in the early 1990s to protect the old growth trees on Vancouver Island's Clayoquot Sound region.

http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=35750

Dec. 3--How many trees does it take to produce 350 million Victoria's Secret catalogs each year?

Too many, says a California environmental group that organized protests yesterday in Columbus and other cities.

San Francisco-based ForestEthics says forests in the foothills of the
Canadian Rockies in Alberta are being destroyed to supply paper for
Victoria's Secret and other large catalog companies.

In October 2003, the group identified Victoria's Secret, a division of
Columbus-based Limited Brands, as the No. 3 catalog producer and in recent months stepped up a campaign against such paper use, which includes protests.

http://omega.twoday.net/stories/427173/

“The naked truth is that the 1 million catalogues mailed daily by Victoria's Secret are destroying some of the world's last remaining old-growth forests and threatening endangered species,” Tzeporah Berman of Forest Ethics said in a statement.

http://www.onlypunjab.com/fullstory1004-insight-Environmental+group+urges+Victorias+Secret-status-23-newsID-225.html

Catalogs have surpassed magazines in overall paper use in the United States, using around 3.6 million tons of paper annually.' According to Graphic Arts Products Tracking Research and Consulting, catalogs account for fifteen percent of U.S. printing demand by volume. (Telephone directories accounted for less than five percent and magazines around thirteen percent.)

ForestEthics and its allies are turning their focus towards the catalog industry and challenging it to stop buying paper from endangered forests and to maximize post-consumer recycled content in catalogs. Lands' End/Sears, LL Bean, William-Sonoma/Pottery Barn, Limited/Victoria's Secret, J Crew, and JC Penney were named as the top targets of this next phase of ForestEthics' campaign because they have some of the largest circulations in the industry, have links to endangered forests, and have refused to change their purchasing practices. The companies will be given 30 days to announce a purchasing policy and plan of action. Based on their responses, one of the six companies will be named as the campaign's next target later this spring.

"The Boreal accounts for one quarter of the Earth's remaining intact forests and is a critical regulator of global climate. The fact that this forest is being destroyed to make catalogs, 97% of which get thrown directly into garbage or recycling without any response, is unacceptable, particularly since they can largely be made from recycled fiber," said Lafcadio Cortesi, Boreal Program Director for ForestEthics.

Catalog Facts:

- Each year catalog retailers mail out about 17 billion catalogs. That's 59 for every man, woman and child in the United States. Yet almost none of this paper contains recycled content. This means that every year almost eight million tons of trees go straight into catalogs that are often discarded or unread. - There are 35 mills - 20 pulp and 15 paper - in the Boreal that supply pulp and paper for US catalogs - The pulp from the Boreal pulp mills makes it into the vast majority of catalogs that reach Americans' mailboxes - Direct links can be made from many Endangered Forests to catalogs. For example, the Little Smoky Endangered Forests in Alberta is being logged to supply Weldwood/International Paper's Hinton pulp mill which supplies pulp to catalogs produced in the United States.

The Boreal:

Over three quarters of the intact, original forests that once covered the earth are degraded or gone. A quarter of what remains is in the Canadian Boreal.'' Stretching across North America from Alaska to the Atlantic, the Boreal is thirteen times the size of California - 1.3 billion acres. Because of its vastness and of the fact that nearly 70% of it is intact, the Canadian Boreal forest is one of the world's greatest conservation opportunities.

http://www.saveourearth.co.uk/soe_enews.php?number=487