New Documentary Reveals Canada's Boreal Forests Getting Clearcut for Toilet Paper

NEW YORK, July 23, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A new documentary released by Charmin Kills Forests, entitled “CHARMIN WIPES OUT A FOREST,” exposes how Procter & Gamble toilet paper and paper towels are made by clear-cutting Canada’s boreal forests. Now available to view for free (one-minute trailer here, 26-minute film here), the film is touring 23 cities, where it is being screened from a mobile video truck. The truck and the film's producer, forest activist Brian Rodgers, are currently in New York City. Rodgers is available for interviews.

Filmed on location in Canada and directed by award-winning filmmaker Steve Mims, the documentary features scientists, experts, and descendants of Procter & Gamble's founders who petitioned the company to stop using virgin fiber from Canada's boreal forest. In addition to Youtube, the film is posted, along with photographs, links to social media posts, published studies, and other documentation and resources, on Charminkillsforests.org.

The Charmin Kills Forests campaign is organized by a small, self-funded team of environmental advocates. It focuses on Charmin as one especially offensive consumer product among others using 100% virgin pulp from one of Earth's few remaining wild forests.

As the film reveals, Canada's boreal forests are less and less wild, and increasingly fragmented and degraded. Even old growth stands that have stood for a century or more continue to be clear-cut for wood pulp for toilet paper and other disposable paper products, destroying habitats of caribou and migratory birds. Once logged, remnant wood ("slash") is burned and the land gets ploughed and sprayed with glyphosate (RoundUp), wiping out formerly diverse ecosystems, which are replaced by monoculture plantations with trees planted in tight rows, aggravating wildfires. Yet P&G claims its products "absolutely prohibit deforestation" and are sustainably sourced.

The film approaches this heartbreaking subject with humor and delivers an upbeat message: consumers can shift industry practices by switching from products made from virgin fiber from forests to viable alternatives like recycled paper and products made from bamboo or cornstalks.

"In a world filled with depressing news, this is one issue where folks can take individual action to help solve a very stupid problem," said the film's producer Brian Rodgers. "In a free-market economy the most American thing you can do is buy something. The second most American thing you can do is not buy something. That's all we're asking folks to do."

Contact: Stephen Kent, [email protected], 914-589-5988

Source: https://charminkillsforests.org/

SOURCE Charmin Kills Forests