Office Depot Victory!

Office Depot Announces Commitment to Protect Global Endangered Forests

When ecopledge launched our campaign on Office Depot in February, 2003, our request was simple. We asked Office Depot to stop selling products made from old-growth wood and wood taken from endangered forests. Office Depot responded last Earth Day with a policy that took some steps in the right direction, but that failed to provide fundamental protection for endangered forests around the world. In response ecopledge and our coalition partners in the Paper Campaign launched a grassroots campaign to bring Office Depot back to the negotiating table.

In the following months, ecopledge students acted with creativity and dedication. They rallied at Office Depot stores. They sent videotaped comments to Bruce Nelson, Office Depot CEO. They built tree graveyards on their campuses. They even wrote and performed plays featuring the Ghosts of Forests Past. We were joined in our efforts by activists from Forest Ethics, Dogwood Alliance, Free the Planet!, the Sierra Student Coalition, and many other activist groups. We were also aided by shareholder activists, including the Green Century Funds, Calvert, Trillium, and As You Sow.

Together, our efforts were successful. Our months of actions and activism have now paid off. The announcement by Office Depot of a revised environmental policy is the successful result of a year-long grassroots effort challenging the company to make a clear policy commitment to protect endangered forests!

In its revised policy, Office Depot seeks to influence the conservation of forests and biodiversity through using its purchasing power to influence its suppliers (the timber companies). It commits to:

* Identify endangered forests, including forests that are rare and vulnerable, contain exceptional biodiversity values, are subject to unsustainable management, or where illegal logging is occurring;
* Engage in landscape level conservation planning, including the establishment of ecological reserves;
* Work with its suppliers to end the conversion of natural forests to plantations;
* Work with its suppliers to prevent the use of genetically modified trees;
* Increase its overall post-consumer recycled content to at least 30%.

The steps taken by Office Depot, in combination with many other corporate commitments, is part of a broader effort to transform the paper industry away from the destruction of endangered forests, practices of over harvesting, and the conversion of natural forests to plantations and toward ecologically sound paper alternatives such as post-consumer recycled content and agricultural waste.

The Office Depot campaign has succeeded. Ecopledge will now move on to other companies and other campaigns to improve corporate behavior and protect the Earth. We invite your participation in this work.

The Paper Campaign coalition partners include:

* American Lands Alliance
* Dogwood Alliance
* Katuah Earth First!
* ForestEthics
* Green Corps
* Ecopledge
* Sierra Student Coalition
* Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project
* The Green Century Funds
* Free the Planet!
* Heartwood
* National Forest Protection Alliance
* Kentucky Heartwood
* Rainforest Action Network
* Rainforest Relief
* ReThink Paper
* Student Environmental Action Coalition
* Iowa STEP
* Shenendoah Ecosystem Defense Group
* Indiana Forest Alliance

and many local groups.