Posted by jamie — 6 July 2010 at 9:56am
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Like orang-utans, the future of Sumatran tigers is being jeopordised by the relentless destruction of their habitat by paper giant APP
Even though we've
had huge success in turning companies like Unilever, Nestlé and Kraft
off palm oil produced by Sinar Mas, that only represents one part of the jigsaw and Sinar Mas is still chewing
its way through Indonesia's rainforests.
Palm oil is one of two
plantation products which are driving deforestation in Indonesia, paper
being the other big hitter. Needless to say, Sinar Mas is up to its
neck in the paper business as well and we've compiled new evidence
in a report called Pulping the Planet which shows exactly how its pulp and paper operations are threatening
the forests just as much as its palm oil business is.
Controlled by the Indonesian Widjaja
family, the Sinar Mas group is one of
the largest conglomerates in Indonesia
engaged in clearing rainforests and
destroying peatlands. The group also
has significant interests in coal mining,
amongst other sectors.
Sinar Mas’ pulp and paper division, Asia
Pulp and Paper (APP), is Indonesia’s
largest pulp and paper producer.
Posted by jamie — 16 November 2007 at 1:27pm
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We've had
some excellent news in the Book Campaign as Hachette Livre, the largest book publisher in the UK, have finally produced an environmental policy which includes some great commitments to making sure the paper they use will be forest-friendly. With imprints such as Hodder & Stoughton, Orion and Little Brown, they publish nearly one-fifth of all books sold in this country, so it's a very big deal.
A new Greenpeace tissue league table released today reveals how Boots and Somerfield are fuelling the destruction of forests around the world. These companies are bottom of the table, because they sell few if any environmentally responsible tissue products.
omerfield have told Greenpeace that it has no plans to start using forest friendly fibre, while Boots stock only one environmentally friendly tissue product across their entire range. This is despite Boots having publicly committed to move towards sourcing all timber and paper products from well managed forests in 1992.
The aim of the Book Campaign is to persuade book publishers to introduce paper procurement policies which commit the company to only using ancient forest friendly paper - that is, paper that has a high recycled content with any virgin wood pulp it contains certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Posted by jamie — 17 May 2007 at 3:55pm
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I get a lot of book tokens for Christmas, birthdays and the like - I read a lot so it's an easy option for a hard-to-buy-for kind of guy. But they have a habit of lurking in my wallet for months at a time, as I've got into the habit of buying second hand books. Buy books cheaply from charity shops and return them when I'm done - it's the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) all rolled into one, with a dose of charitable intentions thrown in for good measure.
The only flaw in my cunning plan is that pre-loved books don't just spontaneously appear in branches of Oxfam, they begin life as a tree in a forest somewhere. Large amounts of fresh virgin paper are required to keep the publishing industry running, and if the production of that paper is causing the destruction of large and ancient forests, those book tokens are going to remain where they are indefinitely.
Greenpeace activists from across Europe launched a dawn protest this morning at the Botnia pulp mill and the Stora Enso paper mill in the northern Finnish town of Kemi. Unfurling a banner reading "Stop ancient Forest Destruction", forty protestors blocked the main entrances to both mills, preventing deliveries of timber taken from Europe's last ancient forests in northern Lapland.
In response to the news that the next Harry Potter book will be printed on forest-friendly paper, Belinda Fletcher, head of Greenpeace's forest campaign, said:
"This announcement is great news and means that Harry Potter's magic will be helping to protect the world's ancient forests. Unfortunately, this is not the case for all books printed in the UK.
