When you're a company like Kimberly-Clark, embracing sustainable business practices is central to the long-term success of your business. Unlike a digital company, Kimberly-Clark's business relies on a steady flow of natural resources to make its products. This week Kimberly-Clark, the maker of paper products like Kleenex, Huggies, and Kotex, committed to sourcing all of its fiber from 100% of the wood fiber for its products from environmentally responsible sources.
According to the company and Greenpeace, by the end of 2011 the company will no longer use any pulp cut from endangered forests by increasing the company's use of FSC-certified pulp and recycled fiber globally. As the largest tissue company in the world, Kimberly-Clark has made a major commitment that's good for the planet and good for their business.
Using a STaR analysis you can begin to understand the logic behind the decision. STaR analysis is a scenario-planning tool that helps businesses look at changes in Society, Technology and Resources and how those changes will affect their business.
From a societal standpoint, Kimberly-Clark has been subjected a loud and boisterous activist campaign by Greenpeace since 2004. Watch this video from Greenpeace reminiscing on the campaign. With big, popular brands like Kleenex in its portfolio, Kimberly-Clark coundn't afford to be known as supporting the cutting of some of the world's most endangered forests. From a technological standpoint, there have been a number of paper process advances which have made it easier to recycle paper and maintain softness and quality. And from a resource perspective, Kimberly-Clark has prepared themselves for future virgin wood shortages as demand and regulation increase. This protects their supply chain from future shocks while their competitors will still be reliant on being able to cut from endangered forests.
Allen Hershkowitz, the paper expert at NRDC, and someone I've known and respected for a long-time, is still quite critical of Kimberly-Clark. He wants them to commit to a higher percentage of recycled content in all their products, instead of just making sure that there are no endangered forests being cut for them. You can read his blog post here.
But overall, this was was a great step for the employees and shareholders of Kimberly-Clark, and Greenpeace should be congratulated for helping to raise the profile of this issue.
See Marc Gunther's excellent blog for another post on this topic.
Here's the Greenpeace campaign page.
Here's Kimberly-Clark's Announcement
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