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Thursday, August 28, 2008

Kimberley Clark Uses Wall*E to Sell Kleenex

From the Greenpeace site a little bit of irony. Kimberley Clarke is using Wall*E a character from the Pixar movie about conservation to sell Kleenex, a product that uses virgin trees and nothing recycled. Of course, the irony is somewhat short lived when you realize that Pixar/Disney must have given their permission to KC to use the Wall*E image in the first place. Ahhh the mighty dollar.


Click here to watch the movie and here to tell Kimberly Clarke what you think.

Enjoy.

Dave


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But arn't these trees grown in managed forests? Therefore the process is carbon neutral. And paper is recyclable and biodegradable.

I don't know if it is still the same, but it used to be more environmentally friendly to use new wood to create white paper than recycled paper. As the process of cleaning old paper used chemicals that where more damaging to the environment than that used for new wood.

I'm not defending Kleenex, but they could argue that by growing their own wood they are being environmently friendly! Until the paper they have produced is burnt or decomposed, it has Removed carbon from the atmosphere.

Just my tuppency worth!
John T.

Dave said...

Hey John,
Thanks for bringing up your thoughts. I'm definitely no expert on the subject at hand, but your post made me think of a few things.

For starters, i don't think it's fair to say that a managed forest is carbon neutral. Just think of all of the machinery used to plant, harvest and whatever else they do to trees that spit out CO2. That said, CO2 isn't what was at issue here so i'll move on.

While paper is recyclable and some is potentially biodegradable, tissues are not. To my knowledge, most recycling places will not take tissues, especially used tissues for recycling so they end up in the garbage. Once they are 40 feet down in a landfill, they will doubtfully biodegrade. That said, worms will eat them in a composter and I can offer proof!

I see your point about the trees using up the CO2 (which of course will re-enter the environment in one way or another eventually).

I think the outrage from Greenpeace is more conceptual than anything else. The whole point of WALL*E is that we are laying waste to the planet by abusing it, and here is a company that is cutting down trees to allow you to blow your nose when there are perfectly good things like handkerchiefs to use in there place.

No concrete answers here, just a lot of food for thought. Also, per your first answer, I don't know that they only use managed forests.

Consume Less, Conserve More!!!!

dave