Greenpeace Calls Out Asia Pulp and Paper

Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), the pulp and paper division of Sinar Mas, stirred up the ire of Greenpeace once again. So much so that Greenpeace presented APP its Golden Chainsaw Award for being “one of the worst rainforest destroyers in Indonesia.”

Never one to miss a “photo opportunity,” Greenpeace representatives—the three women in the photo below—presented the award to an APP representative in the lobby of Paperworld on Jan. 30, 2011.

Paperworld, the world’s largest trade event focused on paper products, office supplies and stationery, is generally a pretty staid event. True, it’s big—2,000+ exhibitors presented new products and forecasts of next year’s trends to 45,500 visitors in 2010—but folks tend to stick to business.

Greenpeace says its investigations into deforestation in Indonesia exposed that APP, Sinar Mas’ pulp and paper division, has converted huge areas of forest and carbon-rich peatlands into acacia and eucalyptus plantations in order to produce packaging, as well as printing, photocopy and tissue paper, which it sells worldwide.

APP also reportedly plans to expand its operations into one of the last refuges for the critically endangered Sumatran tiger. Two Sumatran pulp mills are expected to increase their capacity from the 2006 level of 2.9 million tons per year to 19.6 million tons in coming years.

Indonesia was the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world in 2005, right up there with China, USA, Brazil, India and Russia, according to a comparison of DNPI (Indonesia’s National Office on Climate Change) data published in 2010. [pdf] The deforestation not only releases huge amounts of CO2, it destroys the natural habitat of endangered species like the orangutan and Sumatra tiger.

While getting on the wrong side of Greenpeace can be bad enough, APP’s questionable business practices had already driven the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) to formally dissociate itself from working with the Indonesian company in 2007. [pdf]