Office Max Releases Substandard Environmental Policy

San Francisco – After being subject to a multi-year environmental campaign for its role in forest destruction, OfficeMax announced an environmental policy today in an attempt to keep pace with office supply industry leaders including Staples, Office Depot and FedEx Kinko’s.  The new OfficeMax policy does not meet the standard set by office-supply leaders Staples and Office Depot.  The policy does not address the issue of giving preference to paper that has been independently certified by the Forest Stewardship Council certification (FSC), (equivalent to the organic seal of approval for forestry products,) nor does it protect endangered forests such as North America’s Great Boreal Forest. As Office Max improves and implements its new policy, ForestEthics expects that it will take action to protect Endangered Forests such as the Boreal and the Cumberland Plateau in the Southeastern U.S.,  and that it will show preference for FSC-certified products. 

ForestEthics, who together with the Dogwood Alliance has led a seven-year campaign to transform the office supply industry’s environmental practices, acknowledges OfficeMax’s step forward in adopting an improved paper procurement policy.  But ForestEthics declared it will continue working to improve the OfficeMax policy even further and, in fact, will continue pushing for more progress by all major office suppliers to protect endangered forests.  Later this year ForestEthics and the Dogwood Alliance will release a comprehensive update assessing key components of environmental performance by the largest companies in the U.S. office supply industry.  

“As with any industry, innovation and evolution are constantly changing the landscape of what’s possible when it comes to environmental protection,” said Aaron Sanger of ForestEthics. “For example, five years ago, FSC-certified paper products were not a viable option for mass paper sellers; today they are.  FSC certified paper products offer customers the same type of assurance as food labeled ‘certified organic,’ an assurance they increasingly demand.”

OfficeMax’s commitment comes more than three years after rival Staples and Office Depot announced their commitments.  On issues that are critical to the world’s remaining Endangered Forests, the three policies differ significantly in their approach.  For example, while the OfficeMax policy uses an undefined term “endangered areas” to describe places they “expect” their suppliers to avoid in sourcing fiber for paper products, the Office Depot definition for these places includes extensive criteria that suppliers are required to use in avoiding fiber from endangered forests such as North America’s Great Boreal Forest.   Similarly, both the Staples and Office Depot policies are backed up by strong internal “chain of custody” systems for tracking fiber in paper products to their forest source of origin.  OfficeMax does not have a  “chain of custody” or independent auditing system to ensure their suppliers are meeting expectations, and its policy  does not require its suppliers to disclose forest source of origin for their products. In fact, one of OfficeMax’s principal suppliers of office paper, Boise’s International Falls Mill, is sourcing fiber from endangered Boreal forests in Canada, specifically from Abitibi logging in Ontario. This logging is destroying endangered caribou habitat and forests on land claimed as ancestral territory by the Grassy Narrows First Nation. 

North America’s Great Boreal Forest is one of the last truly wild places on earth.  As one of the world’s largest reserves of terrestial carbon, this forest is a critical regulator of climate change.  It is the breeding ground for 30% of North America’s songbirds and hundreds of species including caribou, wolves and bears. The majestic hardwoods of the Southeast U.S.’s Cumberland Plateau represent some of the most important intact endangered forests in North America. Neither are protected by Office Max’s new policy.

 “The office supply industry has become concerned about its environmental impact, as evidenced by Office Max’s announcement today, which is way overdue.  Unfortunately, the policy announced today does not protect the world’s remaining Endangered Forests,” said ForestEthic’s Aaron Sanger. “The time for companies to act is now, before forests like the Boreal and the Cumberland Plateau are destroyed to make things like copy paper and catalogs.”