[Dryerase] AGR victory over Staples

[Shawn G]

Asheville Global Report
WWW.AGRNews.org

Reprinting permitted for non-profit use and to the members of the Dryerase 
news wire.

Asheville Enviro group celebrates victory over Staples

By Eamon Martin

Asheville, North Carolina, Nov. 20 (AGR)—  Activists across the country are 
celebrating a grassroots victory this week. Staples Inc., the world’s 
largest and fastest growing office supply retailer with more than a thousand 
stores nationwide, announced an unprecedented agreement with environmental 
groups. The agreement will result in sweeping protections for forests in the 
southern United States and around the world. Led by the Asheville, North 
Carolina-based Dogwood Alliance and California-based ForestEthics, the 
campaign targeting Staples has come to a successful close after two years. 
It featured more than 600 protests at Staples stores nationwide, ads 
featuring southern rock legends R.E.M., and tens of thousands of letters and 
calls directed to the company’s CEO.
Last week Staples Office Supply announced that the company is going to phase 
out paper made from US National Forests from their stores. The agreement is 
the culmination of a tireless drive by The Paper Campaign, the largest 
grassroots, market-based forest protection campaign in the US. The campaign 
represents a coalition of dozens of citizen groups dedicated to moving the 
marketplace towards recycled paper.
“Staples’ new policy is a big win for America’s heritage forests in the 
southern US, where paper production is destroying millions of acres of 
forests a year,” said Danna Smith, director of The Paper Campaign for 
Dogwood Alliance. “Staples’ announcement today creates a mandate from the 
marketplace for large paper producers like International Paper to rely more 
on recycled fiber and less on destroying southern forests.”
The Paper Campaign said that they applaud Staples’ move to set the standard 
in the office supply industry and that they are now looking to other paper 
retailers such as Office Max, Office Depot and Corporate Express to follow 
Staples’ lead.
Under Staples’ new guidelines, an industry first, the company will:
• Achieve an average of 30% post-consumer recycled content across all paper 
products it sells
• Phase out purchases of paper products from Endangered Forests, including 
the Canadian Boreal forests, key forests in the Southern US, and endangered 
National Forests
• Create an environmental affairs division and report annually on its 
environmental results.
As logging has been reduced in many high-profile regions around the world 
such as the Pacific Northwest, it has expanded in the southern US and the 
Canadian boreal forests. Five million acres of southern forests, the most 
biologically diverse forests in North America, are being logged each year to 
produce 25% of the world’s paper products and two-thirds of the paper made 
in the US.
International Paper and Georgia Pacific, the two primary loggers of southern 
forests, are major suppliers to Staples. With recycled paper now comparable 
to virgin fiber in quality and price, moving away from cutting trees for 
paper is now practical for the industry and could yield immense conservation 
benefits. If all the paper mills in the South increased their recycled fiber 
use by 30%, 15 million acres of forests – an area comparable to all the 
forests in Tennessee – would be saved over the next ten years.
“Make no mistake, today’s landmark announcement by Staples is a big win for 
America’s vanishing forests in the southern US where paper production is 
destroying some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet,” said Smith.
The Staples campaign included nearly 35 banners dropped on storefronts, 21 
arrests in acts of civil disobedience, creative street theater, over 15,000 
postcards, thousands of phone calls to the corporate headquarters and 
regional offices, hundreds of letters from concerned citizens, 75 children’s 
drawings, coverage in more than 10 national media outlets and over 50 local 
media outlets, a shareholder’s resolution, and flying the CEO over clearcuts 
on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee.
“I can’t say enough for the people who participated in the hundreds of 
demonstrations over the past two years,” said Dogwood Alliance volunteer 
Coleman Smith. “Whether someone had a little or a large part in this, they 
should be proud. This is a great example of how direct action on a 
grassroots level can be so effective.”
“Staples is the first large paper retailer to make such a big commitment to 
forests,” said Andrew George, director of the conservation group National 
Forest Protection Alliance. “Today’s announcement is testament to the power 
of thousands of people joining together against a single corporation to 
demand environmental change.”



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