The Business Ethics Blog

Here’s an interesting story…and not just because it gives me an exuse to post a picture of a Victoria’s secret lingerie model. (ahem!)

The environmental activist group ForestEthics has apparently convinced Limited Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, to change the paper it prints its catalogs on.

Limited Brands, which sends out more than 350 million Victoria’s Secret catalogues a year, promised to end purchases from an Alberta pulp mill logging in Canada’s boreal forest. The agreement came after ForestEthics targeted the company’s image with ads featuring bustier-clothed models toting chain saws.

Here’s the whole story from the Washington Post

The complaint is basically that catalog companies (Victoria’s Secret being one of them) are using too little recycled paper, and too much paper made from environmentally sensitive forests. Victoria’s Secret has, until now, bought its paper from West Fraser Timber Co., which operates in Alberta and British Columbia.

“These are critical and endangered forests that West Fraser is destroying” through clear-cutting practices that also disrupt caribou habitat…

The mayor of one town that is home to a West Fraser mill disputes the claims made by Forest Ethics:

“They don’t clear-cut up here. And it’s simply not true we are taking away caribou habitat,” said Taylor, who, like many in his town of 10,000, works for West Fraser. “This group is not telling the truth. Our boreal forest has actually grown,” he said. “There is more boreal forest today than 50 years ago.”

I don’t have much to say about this by way of analysis. But I’d love to know just what it was that actually convinced the folks at Limited Brands to make the move: was it environmental concern, or threats? (The story in the Post quotes one of the ForestEthics folks sounding like a mafioso:

“We are going to provide all these companies with the option of doing it the easy way,” Paglia said. “If they want to do it the hard way, we can see a tremendous amount of negative press and damage to their brand.”

Sounds like an offer you can’t refuse.

Relevant Links:
Here’s the story in the Globe & Mail (as it appears on the Forest Ethics website).
ForestEthics’s main website
West Fraser Timber Co.