By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
This was a week of news that really illustrated the push and pull between green ideals and the realities of life here on Planet X.
The Obama Administration put logging jobs ahead of forest preservation with its decision to allow a road into an undisturbed forest in the Tongass National Forest outside of Ketchikan, Alaska. The forest, a watershed and recreation area, had been left alone under a Clinton-era rule that protects “roadless” forests.
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February 26th, 2009
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
It’s taking some time, but the health care industry is slowly figuring out how to tamp down the paperwork that’s choking doctor’s offices and irritating patients across the nation. Increasingly physicians are emailing in prescriptions and we in the public are getting our rejections for medical treatment via online records. (Hey, at least we don’t have to wait for the bad news!)
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Related Topics: · Arbor Day Foundation, forests, healthcare, Humana, Paper
August 28th, 2008
By John DeFore
For a movie that explicitly addresses the perils of overconsumption, Pixar’s WALL*E is being used to promote an awful lot of consumer products.
One tie-in in particular is rankling Greenpeace. It seems that the lovable robot’s image has popped up on boxes of Kleenex, a product the activist group has criticized with a “Kleercut” campaign that asserts, “it takes 90 years to grow a box of Kleenex” because the product’s manufacturer Kimberly-Clark “all but refuses to use recycled paper in its products.” (Among other things, they’re trying to get parents and teachers to reject the company’s tissues in classrooms.)
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Related Topics: · forests, Greenpeace, Kimberley-Clark, Kleenex, Pixar, Wall*E
July 17th, 2008
By Barbara Kessler
Wal-Mart Stores is joining the Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN), 
World Wildlife Fund’s initiative to save the world’s most valuable and threatened forests. The giant retailer also announced this week that it is moving toward making some of the jewelry it sells meet standards for sustainability and social responsibility.
Both steps are aimed at aiding the environment, with dual goals of assisting wildlife in jeopardized forests, and in the case of the jewelry, mitigating human rights issues in mining operations.
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Related Topics: · endangered wildlife, forests, sustainable mining, sustainable wood, Wal-Mart, WWF
Paper products are getting unquestionably more environmentally sensitive. With even big name brands like Kimberly-Clark publicly committing to using fibers from sustainably managed forests, you can expect to see stores make more room on the shelves for at least one “alternative” paper product brand.