From Dud To Stud! Staples Commits To New Environmentally Sound Practices!

The following article appeared in the Logan Herald Journal on November 13, 2002.

From dud to stud: Protesters change tune after Staples agrees to demands

By Joe Rowley staff writer

From environmental misfit to environmental steward, the names that activists call Staples have turned 180 degrees.

The office supply store is now the preferred outlet for paper products, Jim Steitz, president of the Ecological Coalition of Students said Tuesday. After two years of being the object of a nationwide boycott campaign by environmental activists who accused the company of destroying national forests, the coalition now says Staples has become an example.

The change of heart came because Staples business leaders committed to meet the students' demands to offer more recycled paper and no paper from environmentally unfriendly sources.

"They should be the preferred business because this agreement is better than anything else in the industry. They're the environmental leader," Steitz said.

The commitment from Staples included selling no paper made with wood fiber taken from national forests or old-growth trees. Also, the company will establish a baseline of 30 percent recycled content for all of its paper and an environmental affairs office to track the company's progress.

The announcement "absolutely" satisfies the protesters' demands, Steitz said.

"These guys have set the standard in the office product industry for environmental stewardship. All the people and businesses that have joined us in the boycott against Staples are now free to shop here again," he said. In fact, Steitz said he will now shop at Staples.

ECOS is part of a nationwide student group, Sierra Student Coalition, that participated in the Staples protest. Eight members of ECOS, including university and high school students and one high school teacher, again set up shop in front of Staples on Tuesday, this time to celebrate their victory.

Despite the agreement and commitment from Staples, the activists still brandished some well-used signs, one of which read "Stop Staples." Steitz said bringing those signs back out was not meant as a slap in the company's face, but to continue engaging customers in the discussion of where their paper comes from.

He said they also wanted to emphasize that it was their activism that brought about the change.

"We just wanted to show some of the tactics that we used in bringing Staples to this point. But with this agreement the protests are over," he said.

The Sierra Student Coalition and other groups that initiated the protest committed to follow Staples' progress and to turn their sights to other office product outlets like OfficeMax and Office Depot to encourage them to follow suit. Staples set the trend for the rest of the industry, one student said.

"Corporate power can be good, this is an example of that," Logan High teacher Jack Greene said. "Corporations in their own right can do the right thing and use their power in a good way. This is one of them."

Steitz hailed the environmental victory as a testament to the power of grass roots groups, and he said it dispels the idea that a corporation can't be challenged.

Greene echoed Steitz's comment, "if people really want something and go after it long enough and hard enough, great things can happen."

Greene also plans to patronize the Logan business now.