PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Victory!!! Victoria's Secret Adopts New Environmental Paper Standards!
by Voices for Animals of Western Pennsylvania Monday, Dec. 11, 2006 at 8:55 PM
voicesforanimals@gmail.com 1-877-321-4VFA PO Box 7181 Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Voices for Animals Announces Landmark Victory: Victoria's Secret Is Adopting More Sustainable Paper Standards for Catalogs!

WE WON! After 2 years of working on a local level on the Victoria’s Dirty Secret campaign, Voices for Animals is happy to announce that last week, Wednesday December 6, Victoria’s Secret announced that it would be adopting more environmentally sustainable paper standards for its lingerie catalog! As most people familiar with the campaign know, Victoria’s Secret was sending out over 395 million catalogs a year-over a million a day-on paper made of little to no recycled content that was logged from endangered forests such as the Boreal Forest in Canada. Determined to join the fight against deforestation, the destruction of millions of animals’ homes, and the natural ecosystems the animals depend on, Voices for Animals united with the national environmental organization Forest Ethics in their campaign to reform Victoria’s Secret’s destructive catalog industry practices. After many protests, leafletings, and public actions such as a Funeral March through Shadyside and a Victoria’s Secret Chainsaw Massacre Protest, all our hard work has finally paid off!

The new paper standards that Victoria’s Secret announced they are adopting go beyond the paper standards that Forest Ethics has asked that it set for its lingerie catalog. Those commitments follow:

· Limited Brands has partnered with its paper supplier to eliminate all pulp supplied from the Boreal Forest (Alberta’s Rocky Mountain Foothills) and British Columbia (Inland Temperate Rainforest).

· Shifting its catalogs to either 10% PCW or at least 10% Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) content during 2007.

· A preference for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, the only credible certification for sustainable logging. Limited Brands has partnered with its supplier to shift four of its mills to FSC.

· Overall catalog paper reduction

· A commitment to continual improvement on environmental attributes of catalog paper and paper use. Progress will be audited by an independent third party and made public.

· A commitment to phase out of Endangered Forests

· One million dollars committed to research and advocacy to protect Endangered Forests and ensure leadership in the catalog industry

While these commitments may seem like minor remedies, given the rate of destruction in endangered forests, the amount of FSC certified and post consumer waste paper available to the market is still limited due to a lack of demand. Victoria's Secret's decision has caused William Sonoma and Dell, two other leaders in the catalog industry, to adopt similar standards for their catalogs and drying up the available PCW and FSC-certified paper available. In the long run though their new policies will expand the amount of PCW and FSC-certified paper produced in existing mills and cause more mills to shift to these more sustainable methods. Dell, William Sonoma, and Victoria's Secret have all planned to increase the amount of these papers in their catalogs as their availability increases over the years.

As encouraging as this win is, it is only the first step in an ongoing campaign to shift the catalog industry's relationship to the world's forests. In the coming months Forest Ethics, Voices for Animals, and the other grassroots organizations who work in coalition on this campaign will be determining who will be the next target in the campaign. Our greatest hopes are that the next segment of this campaign will cause even more businesses to voluntarily change their catalog policies and make it an industry norm to take the forests, ecosystems, and human and non-human animals that depend on them into account when choosing logging sites and methods. We believe the success of the Victoria’s Secret campaign will help in this and have effects that will reverberate across the catalog industry as a whole.

Congratulations and many thanks to those of you who have showed up to Victoria's Secret demonstrations, helped us make signs, or simply given us encouragement as we have worked on this campaign for the past two years! Your support has helped make this landmark victory possible!

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