Sixteen major Canadian companies — including Bell Canada, Nike Canada, Kinko’s, and Citizens Bank — announced yesterday that they will stop purchasing all paper products made from old-growth forests within three years. The agreement stems from a campaign organized by the Markets Initiative, a coalition of environmental groups that includes Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Until now, the Markets Initiative had focused on getting American and European companies to phase out the use of old-growth products. Meanwhile, an effort by enviros and timber companies to reach a truce in the war over old-growth logging in British Columbia has hit a snag, with the region’s native populations and logging workers complaining that they’ve been left out of negotiations.
