US & European Corporations Turn Away From BC Rainforest Wood

["greenbase" <greenbas@gb.greenpeace.org>]

U.S. AND EUROPEAN CORPORATIONS TURNING AWAY FROM BRITISH
COLUMBIA RAINFOREST WOOD

Fortune 500 Firms Respond to Call to Seek More Ecologically-
Sound Alternatives

WASHINGTON, DC, April 1, 1998 -- Responding to the call by
Greenpeace and other environmentalists to help protect the
world's largest unprotected rainforest, major companies from the
United States and around the world, have begun cancelling tens
of millions of dollars' worth of contracts with logging
companies that clearcut Canada's coastal rainforests.

Specifically targeted are two Canadian firms, Doman Ltd. with
its subsidiary Western Forest Products (WFP), and Interfor.
These two companies threaten the intact watersheds of the
largest, unprotected coastal temperate rainforest in the world -
Canada's Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia (BC).  For
the past year, Greenpeace and other environmental organizations
have been asking wood-using businesses globally to eliminate
suppliers like Doman and Interfor, and to transition away from
all old-growth wood products.

Major companies in the United States and Europe have responded.
In the U.S., companies that have moved away from BC lumber and
paper supplies, or have issued public statements of their intent
to do so, include: California-based HomeBase, Inc. (the third
most profitable "do-it-yourself" chain in the country), Xerox,
Kinkos, 3M, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, FedEx, and two Fortune 500
firms who wish not to be publicly identified at this time. 

Last week, as Greenpeace activists engaged in a 51-hour blockade
of a Doman lumber shipment to Europe, the U.K.'s fourth largest
"do-it-yourself" chain, Magnet Stores, cancelled its Doman
contract, as has Austrian chemical producer Lenzing AG.  Other
European companies turning away from BC ancient forest products
include B&Q, Do-It-All, Sainsburys, BBC Magazines (UK); and some
of Germany's largest "do-it-yourself" construction companies and
publishing houses.

Notable companies that have refused act on these concerns are
Home Depot (US) and Celanese, the US daughter company of
chemical giant Hoechst AG of Germany.

"What's happening here is very simple: consumers don't want to
be part of  ancient forest destruction, and companies are moving
to meet their customers' needs," said Marc Evans, Greenpeace USA
Forestry Campaigner.  "We expect the majority of U.S.
corporations to follow this trend."

These moves come as a trial gets underway this week in Vancouver
of 18 environmentalists, including Greenpeace activists,
arrested in June 1997 for blockading Interfor's clearcutting in
the Great Bear rainforest. The defendants, from Belgium, Canada,
Denmark, Ireland, Germany and USA, face sentences of months of
jail time for standing with members of the Nuxalk First Nation
to protect the Great Bear rainforest.  

Of the 353 original valleys on the West Coast of Canada, only 69
remain intact and unlogged. The majority of these are slated to
be clearcut in the next 10 years. Globally, 80 percent of
ancient forests have already been destroyed and industrial
logging is the greatest threat to what remains. Greenpeace's
goal is to shift industrial logging from ancient to secondary
forests where logging would be conducted under independent
ecological criteria such as those of the Forest Stewardship
Council.

Greenpeace on the Internet at http://www.greenpeace.org