OREN NEWS

The Melbourne times

Wednesday March 25 1998

This is it, the bottom line...

Toilet tissue giant Kimberly Clark wants to get to the bottom of why the Moreland Council is no longer buying its products.
The council made the decision recently in a bid to prop up support for the ailing recycling industry, conservation co-ordinator Paul Murfitt said.
He said the council would not use Kimberly Clark products because they were made from logged forests rather than recycled paper. The company produces Kleenex goods.
Instead, the council will use paper produced by Queensland Cosco company.
And the municipality of Moreland's tissue use is nothing to be sneezed at; about five hundred staff worked for the council and they use an awful lot of toilet paper in a year. But Kimberly Clark corporate services manager Peter Crawford said the wood used by the company was defective material which was previously burnt by Loggers.
He said the company had started using Otway timber in late 1992. It could not use recycled paper because it was mostly newsprint, from which tissue paper cannot be made.
Mr Crawford said high grade paper was needed to make recycled tissue, which the company regarding as a waste of resources.
He also said there was no consumer demand for recycled paper and Kimberly Clark had no intention of producing any recycled goods.
The action of Moreland Council was not having any effect. It is not a view shared by the broad based community, he said. However, Mr Crawford met with representatives of the Victorian Local Governance Association at the Otway Forest yesterday in a bid to make Moreland Council change its mind.
Paul Brown, from the National Union of students, which garnared the councils support said other councils were considering joining the ban on Kimberly Clark politics.
- Xavier la Canna