Today, you can join dozens of campus groups and cities working to transform their local communities by advocating for a reduction in consumption of wood products, and the promotion of materials that are harvested in a sustainable manner.

Download our Endangered Forests Activist Toolkit.

Customers choose which products to buy, and which products not to buy. Their decisions affect the marketplace. In 1999, after three years of a student-led consumer pressure campaign, Home Depot decided to phase out products from endangered forests. Many of the top ten do-it-yourself chains followed suit soon after due to market pressure. In 2003, after another three-year campaign, Boise, one of the largest US loggers, did the same. Boise responded to dozens of campus campaigns to sever business ties with the company, as well as their major international customers that cancelled campaigns.

Join this movement by urging your school or city to adopt an Endangered Forests Policy and to cancel their contract with destructive multinational companies, such as Kimberly Clark, International Paper and Weyerhaeuser. Your university needs to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. We do not need to consume the last endangered forests left on this planet when alternatives are readily available, including 100% post-consumer recycled paper, tree-free paper (kenaf, hemp, and agricultural waste), recycled wood or plastic composites, and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified sustainably harvested wood products.

By adopting an Endangered Forests policy, your university or city will reduce the demand for endangered-forest products and increase the demand for sustainable alternatives. Your university will also send a powerful message to the industry that consumers no longer want old growth forest products. Finally, the finance industry will realize that projects in old growth forests are an increasingly bad investment.

Please contact us if you would like help in passing your policy at activism[at]ran[dot]org.

 

For more information on these victories please click here If you would like a speaker or a trainer to come to your school or city and help your efforts please contact us at activism[at]ran[dot]org.