Sunday, December 9, 2007

Sears Sharper Image Spiegel Top Forest Naughty List


Forest Ethics and its Catalog Cutdown campaign have released its annual Naughty and Nice list which grades catalog senders on environmental paper practices.

Chicago-based Sears Holdings Corporation, with catalog offerings including Sears, Lands’ End and the recently acquired K-Mart, ranks among the top catalog producers in North America. Forest Ethics says that the catalogs are made up of trees cut from endangered forests and have “little to no recycled content.”

The group has had a number of successful campaigns against catalog companies. Limited Brands (parent company of Victoria’s Secret, Express, Bath & Body Works, and The Limited), for example, signed a new forest policy following a long Forest Ethics’ campaign.

In its Naughty and Nice list, 21 companies were evaluated according to four criteria: whether or not endangered forests are cut to produce the company’s catalogs; whether the company uses Forest Stewardship Council Certified paper; the amount of post-consumer recycled content in the company’s catalogs; and the extent of the company’s efforts to reduce overall paper consumption.

Patagonia, Williams-Sonoma, Victoria’s Secret (see link above), Dell, Timberland, Crate & Barrel, REI, L.L. Bean, and J. Crew ended up on the nice list.

JC Penney, Macy’s/Bloomingdales, and PC Mall made the checking twice list.

Neiman Marcus, Talbots/J. Jill, OfficeMax, Lands’ End, Eddie Bauer, School Specialty, Sharper Image, Spiegel, and Sears follow up on the naughty list.