A few days ago, we revealed that Asia Pulp and Paper, the world’s most notorious rainforest destroyer, has lost more customers, with lots of big clients walking away because APP keeps on using Indonesian rainforest fibre in its products. And last week, APP’s ill-judged advertising campaign, ‘APP Cares’, was called ‘misleading’ by advertising standards officials in Holland.
APP’s response? It wheeled out its creaking publicity machine in the guise of New York-based public relations outfit Cohn and Wolfe. Cohn and Wolfe spammed journalists around the world with an email saying Greenpeace made "false allegations against Asia Pulp and Paper". Our campaign "misleads the toy industry on [the] Indonesian rainforest", said the news release as it slapped into media inboxes like a dead fish.
How has APP reached this conclusion? It has picked out a few lines from our catalogue of evidence and then attempted to kick all the context out of them. APP is quoted as saying: “Greenpeace based its entire global campaign against APP on a single premise: it had commissioned tests which proved that APP products contained Indonesian rainforest fibre. The company Greenpeace asked to carry out the tests has admitted this claim cannot be justified.”
This is, frankly, laughable. We didn’t base our entire campaign on a single premise. We’ve got a mountain of evidence linking APP to rainforest destruction, and it starts with APP’s own documents. Some of these documents are public, such as its latest corporate social responsibility (CSR) report (pdf), where APP admits that it uses rainforest fibre, though it prefers to refer to this in PR-speak as "mixed wood residues". We also obtained APP’s own internal planning documents which confirm ongoing plans to target rainforest areas in order meet fibre needs.
But of course we don’t just rely on APP’s information. By carrying out overflights of APP concession areas we have repeatedly documented - using GPS images - large-scale rainforest clearance by APP’s suppliers. Our mappers have pinpointed deforestation in APP concessions, our on-the-ground investigations have tracked the timber from these areas to APP mills, and our chain-of-custody research links the products from these mills to global brands like those in the toy sector. And yes, we also did forensic testing that confirms the presence of rainforest fibre (mixed tropical hardwoods) in a number of products.
So, let’s have a look at what the independent paper testing laboratory referred
to in the press release, IPS, told APP:
“IPS is only able to determine the types of fibres present in such samples. We have not, and are unable to identify country of origin of the samples."
IPS is
absolutely correct because its testing is not designed to identify the country
of origin, so of course we didn’t ask them to do that. It’s designed to identify
the types of wood fibre. We put these tests together with the rest of our
evidence, telling us everything we needed to know about APP’s sourcing.
“This type of assertion would need to be based on data outside of our findings.”
Yes, exactly right; which is why we spent months engaged in a thorough and forensic examination of APP’s supply chain, including carrying out field research to document the clearance of rainforests.
“Therefore we are unable to comment on the credibility of the statements Greenpeace has made regarding country of origin.”
Well, hold the front page. IPS is saying here that it is "unable to comment" and quite right too. It is not, as APP suggests, saying that our evidence has "no scientific basis".
Somehow, the PR spin team at Cohn and Wolfe have taken a scientist saying they are unable to comment and strung it out into a several hundred word news release saying we made false allegations. It’s just the kind of tosh that gives the PR industry a bad name. Fortunately, very few people take this stuff seriously. And that is because APP’s claims hold less water than a sieve.
All of our evidence has been available for months for everyone to see right here. And we’ll continue to post our evidence there as we press for APP to reform its practices.
So, Asia Pulp and Paper, this is all getting a bit ridiculous. I’d suggest you take a walk around the offices in Jakarta that you share with your sister company Golden Agri Resources and have a chat with them about their forest protection commitments. Those credible commitments have started to win back customers like Nestlé and Unilever, and can lead to real changes on the ground. You could follow suit. Your critics in Indonesia and around the world would welcome it.
You need a coherent plan to solve these issues, not a half-baked PR attack campaign.
