Tissue issue

In the Sept. 1 Mirror, there was a picture and a short report of the action led by four activists who held a banner and distributed leaflets in front of a supermarket [The Front, Photo of the week]. This action targeted Kleenex and Kimberly-Clark because of their awful forestry and production practices. The message that we were sending to the consumers on that day was do not buy Kleenex-brand products, but rather tissue products made of recycled fibre, and not that “excessive use of tissue is endangering our boreal forest,” as it was mentioned in the Mirror.

In North America, less than 19 per cent of the pulp that Kimberly-Clark uses for its disposable tissue products comes from recycled sources. The rest comes directly from forests like Canada’s Boreal. Most of the Kimberly-Clark products sold in local grocery stores, including Kleenex-brand products, contain no recycled fibre whatsoever. Despite the fact that it has the capacity to make a much higher percentage of its products from post-consumer recycled fibre, Kimberly-Clark chose, in 2004, to use three million metric tons of virgin fibre to produce its tissue paper products globally.

To help stop Kimberly-Clark and Kleenex from destroying ancient forest like the boreal forest, Greenpeace suggests some simple yet effective things to do. Among them, consumers can send an e-mail to the president of Kimberly-Clark or take action in their community. To know more about the campaign, visit the www.stopkleenex.com Web site.

To guide consumers to choose ecological products, Greenpeace produced a consumer guide to tissue products to highlight the brands and the companies that produce Ancient forest friendly tissue products, like Cascades, Atlantic Packaging, Seventh Generation and Earth Friendly Products—see www.greenpeace.ca/tissue.

Along with the picture in the Mirror, the short tagline could have been clearer with these facts and the real root of the problem of boreal forest destruction.

» Mélissa Filion, Project Organizer, Greenpeace Canada

Gentrification gripes

I am responding to the Sept 15. news brief “Housing party,” by Patrick Lejtenyi [The Front].

As the popularity of condos has increased significantly over the last decade, more and more formerly affordable neighbourhoods like the Plateau have gone upscale, and many poor tenants have been pushed out. Many parts of Point St-Charles, St-Henri and Centre-Sud, too, have undergone gentrification in the last few years.

Will any neighbourhood be spared from encroaching gentrification? Will all the poor folks be pushed into Hochelaga-Maisonneuve or parts of Verdun and Villeray? Or will the poor be asked to levitate and live on air?

The candidates in this year’s mayoral elections must not only make social housing construction a priority but also be pushed to increase the stock of apartment buildings for tenants who are not wealthy.

» Manish Patwari

Resto Bizarro confuses professor

I am in the habit of getting the Mirror every week. My main reason is to read the book and restaurant reviews. Your book reviews are good, but your restaurant reviews are something else.

I sometimes get the impression that Alice and Yanka are attempting to be humorous. Instead, they end up being confusing, misleading, and I end up being not much wiser about the restaurant they have reviewed. For these reasons, I am not suggesting that they be fired, but rather that they be helped and guided in their efforts.

» Prof. G. Wilson, Faculty of Music, McGill University

False proof

In an e-mail exchange last May, Chris Hand of Zeke’s Gallery told me that the Mirror publishes every single letter it receives. Witness the two letters from Mr. Hand in today’s Mirror that would seem to prove his point.

Is Mr. Hand correct? Is the Mirror really so hard up for reader feedback that it does actually publish every letter it receives? Publish this letter and prove him right or don’t publish it and prove him wrong.

» Helen Shapiro

More reader feedback!

[The following letter was transcribed from the back of the above postcard, which was addressed to the Mirror and fixed with a Hungarian postage stamp]:

More, more homosexuality. More, more Jamaican refugees. And the dope dealers in Quebec, let them screw up all judicial system in the province. More, more Hindu Vishna Krishna followers to testify against “white racist pigs.”

» Annonymous, Hungary

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