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Who owns Cottonelle? Wet Wipes recalled over bacteria contamination, Internet says ‘can’t trust anything’

Cottonelle is a line of toilet paper produced by the American multinational personal care corporation Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Toiler paper brand Cottonelle has announced a nationwide recall of its wet wipes, as they may be contaminated with bacteria that cause infection. The products were recalled after receiving a few complaints about skin irritation and infections, according to reports. The recall includes Cottonelle Flushable Wipes and GentlePlus Flushable Wipes manufactured between February and September 2020. The brand’s official website has come up with an option where the customers can enter the lot code at the bottom of the packaging to determine if the wipes are among the affected lot and can be recalled. It also provides answers to the most frequently asked questions.

Who owns Cottonelle?

Cottonelle is a line of toilet paper produced by the American multinational personal care corporation Kimberly-Clark Corporation. The brand has created a range of different toilet papers, including regular, Cottonelle Double, Cottonelle Ultra,  Cottonelle Aloe & E, Cottonelle Kids and Cottonelle Extra Strength. They are currently being sold in the United States and Australia under the Kleenex brand. It is also marketed as Andrex in the UK and as Baby Soft in South Africa.

Meanwhile, Kimberly-Clark is known worldwide for making paper-based consumer products. The company creates sanitary paper products and surgical & medical instruments. The products under Kimberly-Clark include Kleenex facial tissue, Kotex feminine hygiene products, Cottonelle, Scott and Andrex toilet paper, Wypall utility wipes, KimWipes scientific cleaning wipes and Huggies disposable diapers and baby wipes. The company holds its main shares with the Vanguard Group, BlackRock, State Street Corporation and others. Its subsidiaries include Kimberly-Clark Professional. It was first founded in Neenah, Wisconsin in 1872 and is based in Las Colinas section of Irving, Texas since 1985. Kimberly-Clark ran its own paper mills around the world for decades but closed its operations in 2012. With over $18 billion annual revenue, the company is regularly found among the Fortune 500.

Environmental Issues

A Kleercut campaign was launched by Greenpeace in 2005 linking Kimberly-Clark to using more than three million tons of pulp a year from forests to produce a range of tissue papers products. The company was also charged for the logging of ancient boreal forests. The campaign ended in 2009 after Kimberly-Clark released its new environmental policy. The corporation was also in news in the 1980s after a dead zone for 12 kilometers downstream its operation resulted from a daily flow of 115 million liters of effluent. In 1989, the company spent $25 million CAD on a  "lagoon to remove suspended solids and oxygen-destroying chemicals from its waste". Furthermore, it changed its bleaching process to stop producing poisonous chemicals.

Cottonelle by Kimberly-Clark has come under fire after recalling its bacteria-infected wipes.  A significant number of people have expressed concerns over having caught the infection by using the wipes before the recall was made public.

One concerned Twitter user wrote, "Check Your Wipes! Cottonelle Recall, (both of my cases from Costco were infected!) Yuck! 2020 sucks! First you can't get toilet paper, then when you get the wipes, they infect you with toxic bacteria! What is World comming too! 3rd World!" Another added, "Cottonelle did a recall for their baby wipes being infected with a bacteria, smh can’t trust anything." While another tweeted, "I used a Cottonelle wipe on my armpits recently and it produced a strong wet-dog type odor that had zero to do with my pits. I knew something was wrong so we stopped using them and now know our wipes are in the recalled batch. Switching to #seventhgeneration."