Greenpeace Sticks It To Toshiba: Company Has No Paper Policy

Update: Toshiba pulled the plug on its campaign the day after this article appeared. See 9 Lessons from Toshiba's No-Print Day Debacle for the full story.
 
Toshiba's misleading "No-Print Day" campaign may be an attempt to distract us from the company's dismal environmental record.

Greenpeace ranks the company tied for #13, out of 15 major manufacturers, in the latest edition of its annual Guide to Greener Electronics.

Toshiba's score of only 2.8 on a scale of 10 is actually an improvement over the previous year, when Greenpeace penalized it for backtracking on a previous commitment to remove certain hazardous materials from its PCs -- and lying about it.

But here's the kicker: The Greenpeace report says Toshiba "fails to score on paper sourcing as it does not have a paper procurement policy which excludes suppliers that are involved in deforestation and illegal logging."

Greenpeace Is Back, But Time Warner Looks the Other Way

Nearly 16 years to the day after protesters hung a "Take The Poison Out Of Paper" banner on the TIME-Life building, Time Warner's paper-buying practices were blasted once again this week by Greenpeace.

But two Time Warner properties, TIME magazine and CNN, published articles about the Greenpeace study that failed to mention its listing of Time Warner's CNN Traveller magazine as one of the brands that "prop up Sinar Mas" by buying from its Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) division.

Other magazines singled out for criticism in "How Sinar Mas Is Pulping the Planet" on Tuesday include three Hearst brands (Esquire, Marie Claire, and Cosmo Girl) and Hachette Filipacchi's Elle -- though it wasn't clear whether Greenpeace was pointing the finger at those companies or at content licensees who publish Asian-language editions.

But the copy of CNN Traveller shown in the report is clearly an English-language edition, and the magazine's Web site indicates that the Asian edition is published by CNN.

The TIME article notes that Greenpeace "singles out some of APP's big global customers" like WalMart, Hewlett Packard, and KFC. But nowhere does the article mention Time's UK-based sister publication. And the CNN story doesn't list any of the companies that Greenpeace criticizes for buying from the Sinar Mas empire, which has repeatedly been accused of massive deforestation in Indonesia.

On July 11, 1994, three Greenpeace activists gained international media attention by climbing Time Inc.'s headquarters in New York and hanging a banner saying "TIME: Chlorine Kills -- Take The Poison Out of Paper". Since then, the Time Inc. branch of Time Warner has focused on studying the environmental impact of magazine paper and working with its suppliers to reduce that impact.

Related articles:

• Illegal Logging in Indonesia: Not Funny "The country’s enforcement of logging laws is a joke."
• Three, or Maybe Four, Green Magazine Pioneers: Both Time Inc. and Hearst have been green leaders in the U.S. magazine industry.
• Marcal Challenges the Green-ness of Greenpeace: Paper company accuses Greenpeace of setting its standards for paper too low.

Both Sides in Asian-Paper Debate Are Lobbying U.S. Printers

U.S. printers are hearing environmentally themed messages from both sides on the question of whether to buy Asian paper.

Ten North American environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and ForestEthics, issued a letter to various printers and paper buyers today asking them not to buy paper from Eagle Ridge Paper, claiming the merchant is a division of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP).

The letter claims that APP “is obtaining pulp and paper products from operations having adverse climate, human rights, and biodiversity impacts in Indonesia,” reports The Paper Planet. APP established Eagle Ridge as a front in the U.S., the letter adds, after APP “lost hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts” from such companies as Office Depot and Staples “because of its poor environmental and social record and its reported links to illegally obtained wood.”

Meanwhile, an APP-backed organization called Save Printer Jobs is urging U.S. printers to oppose anti-dumping penalties on coated paper from Indonesia and China. The U.S. Department of Commerce is scheduled to issue a preliminary ruling March 1on the case, which was brought by NewPage, Sappi, Appleton Coated, and the United Steelworkers union.

“A tariff on imported coated paper from China and Indonesia will hurt the U.S. printing industry” by driving up paper prices, the organization claims. “Higher costs will force many publishers to seek cheaper printing options in Canada and Mexico – or forgo printing some products all together.”

Save Printer Jobs also notes the “hypocrisy” of American mills claiming they are being hurt by government-subsidized Asian paper after the U.S. industry received about $9 billion in black liquor credits during 2009. NewPage and SAPPI received more than $400 million last year in black liquor credits, which critics claim is an abuse of a program that was intended to encourage production of new, environmentally friendly fuels.

“How can giant mills claim, with a straight face, that they are victims rather than perpetrators of market distortion?” Save Printer Jobs asks. “The giant mills and their hedge fund backers won’t give the taxpayers back their money from 2009, but it is not too late to stop their effort to slap an unwarranted tariff on imported paper that will raise costs for the printing industry and eventually drive U.S. printing jobs overseas.”

Some of the 10 organizations involved in today’s letter about Eagle Ridge have also opposed U.S. subsidies for black liquor, a pulp byproduct commonly used as a power source by pulp mills.

Related articles:

• Subsidized U.S. Mills Fight Back Against Subsidized, Cross-Dressing Coated Papers discusses the original filing of the antidumping case.
• Illegal Logging in Indonesia: Not Funny describes Indonesia's destructive forestry practices.
• Black Liquor Scorecard: $4.7 Billion Through September details what 21 publicly traded companies received in black liquor credits through the 3rd Quarter. Some of the companies have not reported 4th Quarter numbers yet.

Illegal Logging in Indonesia: Not Funny

A government official in Indonesia has now acknowledged what environmental groups have been saying for years: The country’s enforcement of logging laws is a joke.

West Kalimantan Governor Cornelis was supposed to present “a key environmental speech” last week in support of the country’s “One Man, One Tree” effort to promote voluntary tree planting, the Jakarta Globe reports. But he kept getting interrupted by huge logging trucks rumbling by.

“If we ask the drivers, I don’t think they will have permits,” he laughed as two trucks rolled by. Finally, he ordered police to block any logging trucks until his speech was finished.

Legal or illegal, certified or not, logging has generally been an environmental nightmare in Indonesia, which has lost an estimated 70% of its original forest cover. And the tree-planting efforts ballyhooed by the government are mostly for single-species plantations that replace clear-cut natural forests.

Plans are already afoot in Indonesia to game the proposed REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) program being debated in Copenhagen, reports Angela Dewan for NewMatilda.com. The plans involve clearing tropical rainforests (in some cases releasing greenhouse gases from the peat swamps), replacing them with “sustainable” tree plantations, and then collecting REDD credits for operating the plantations in a sustainable way.

Don’t count on the Indonesian government to stand in the way. Many have documented and described its rampant corruption -- none better than a farmer Dewan interviewed named Muhamad Nasir:

"When the government sends us a buffalo, by the time it gets here, all that is left is the tail.”