The report analyzes the practices of the five largest European tissue manufacturers - Georgia Pacific, Kimberly Clark, Metsa Tissue, Procter and Gamble, and Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA) - which together supply about 70 percent of the European market for paper goods. The European tissue business is worth around 8.5 billion euros annually and accounts for 26 percent of global tissue consumption.

The WWF report is based on information which is not publicly available; it was given to WWF in year-long discussions with the five companies.

Based on this information, the companies were compared and scored on their wood sourcing practices, levels of recycled content, public reporting, transparency about their emissions to water and air, waste disposal, and use of water and energy resources

The comparative leader in the evaluation is SCA Tissue with 46 percent of total achievable points, followed by Metsa Tissue with 35 percent, Georgia Pacific 32 percent, Procter and Gamble with 26 percent, and Kimberly Clark with 24 percent.

“Consumers have no idea that they may be threatening the world’s forests when they go to the bathroom,” said Duncan Pollard, head of the WWF European Forest Program. “It’s a myth that recycled tissue products are not of a high quality. After all, people use recycled tissue products most of the day when they are out of their homes anyway.”

Each European uses 13 kilograms of tissue each year, WWF estimates, and a total of about 22 billion rolls of toilet paper, or 5.5 million tons, are used by all Europeans in a year.

This is 200,000 truckloads of tissue products that end up either flushed down the toilet or in landfills. "If you stretched out all the tissues used in Europe in one year, it would reach to the moon and back 635 times, and travel around the world 12,000 times," WWF says.

Europeans use about four times as many napkins, facial tissues and paper towels as the average world citizen. The WWF study found that that the vast majority of tissue products these companies are selling to European households contain "alarmingly" low levels of recycled fibers.

As a result, high quality virgin wood fibers are taken directly from natural forests and plantations in Latin America, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Russia, Asia, and Europe, and end up as waste without the consumer’s knowledge. Using trees straight from the forest for toilet paper is "wasteful and unnecessary," WWF maintains.

Manufacturers argue that retailers want non-recycled products because this is what consumers are asking for.

Only Metsa Tissue has credibly shown that they are using a significant amount of post consumer recycled fiber which is collected directly from the end-user, WWF says.

Procter and Gamble uses no post-consumer waste; Georgia Pacific state they barely use post consumer waste.

Kimberly Clark and SCA Tissue indicate that they do, but their definition of recycled fiber does not clearly include wood fibers which come directly from the end-consumer.

Only Georgia Pacific has committed to an increase of their current level of recycling in Europe by three percent. This company aims to increase recycled fibers in consumer tissue products by two percent and in "away from home" or office tissue products by one percent. None of the other companies have shown a willingness to improve the amount of recycled fibers in the products they produce.

Kimberly Clark, the largest tissue product company in the world, is taking criticism for its North American operations too. On November 1, Greenpeace took aim at the manufacturer of Kleenex, because the company continues to use paper and pulp sourced directly from clearcut boreal forests throughout North America to make products that are used once and then thrown away or flushed down the toilet.

Kimberly Clark, produced 3.7 million metric tons of tissue products last year, turning over US$14.3 billion in the process. Yet less than 20 percent of these products were made using recycled paper, Greenpeace points out.

The company's website makes a virtue out of this, claiming that, "Kleenex Facial Tissue is made from 100 percent virgin fiber and contains no recycled fiber. Virgin fibre is used in our tissue because it provides the superior softness consumers expect from a premium facial tissue product."

WWF and Greenpeace are both requesting that manufacturers be more responsible when sourcing their wood. They recommend that consumers look and ask for the few recycled tissue brands that are currently produced by the five major manufacturers as well as brands from smaller companies for which recycled products are a niche market.

Consumers should also ask shops and supermarkets to stock recycled tissues, WWF suggests.

“Every day about 270,000 trees are effectively flushed down the toilet or end up as garbage around the world, such a use of the forests is both wasteful and unnecessary,” said Pollard. “Manufacturers must use more recycled fibers in their tissue products, as this means fewer trees will be cut down.”

Some recycled disposable paper products are on the market. Conservationists say consumers can create the demand that will ensure a supply of recycled paper goods. (Photo courtesy One World Shop and Education Center)

Greenpeace Canada offers the Greenpeace Shopper's Guide to Ancient Forest Friendly Tissue Products. Over 150 tissue products that are sold in Canada are listed in this guide, with information on whether or not each product is ancient forest friendly. Find it at: http://www.greenpeace.ca/tissue/index.php

Unsustainable timber harvesting, illegal logging and land rights conflicts are a fact in key source regions for tissue products, the WWF report says. The tissue giants have not yet proven to WWF that they actually can exclude illegal and controversial timber from their tissue products. Only SCA Tissue has put in place an adequate mechanism to do so.

According to WWF, the companies also need to better inform consumers about the recycled content of their products. Consumers should not be misled by recycling symbols on tissue packaging which often only refer to the wrapping paper, and not to the product itself.

People may have to get used to using tissue that is not white, the organization says. "The whiter the product, the more likely there is a high level of virgin fibers in the product or a huge amount of bleaching. Both have negative consequences for the environment, says WWF, suggesting that customers choose products which are not so bright.

Although WWF sees some progress over recent months in the companies’ willingness to address the issues which WWF representatives raised in face to face negotiations with them, the group says there is still "a lot of room for improvements towards a responsible use of the world’s forests."