Tag Archives: APP

Avoid buying Koch Industries products with new phone app!

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Here’s a cool new toy. A popular article on Forbes today details a new smart phone app called “Buycott,” which is catching the attention of shoppers who want to make sure their money spent on groceries and other basic products isn’t enriching corporations with bad records on social and environmental responsibility.

Take Koch Industries. Greenpeace has written extensively about the Koch brothers’ $67 million in support for groups that deny climate change science and promote industries that pollute our air and water, our politics, and our health. The millions of dollars going to groups like ALEC and the State Policy Network also serves to break unions, privatize education, and water down healthcare reform.

Those are good reasons not to give a dime to the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, who own the vast majority of Koch Industries’ private stock. Yet many consumers may not realize that buying products like Quilted Northern toilet paper or Brawny paper towels contributes to Koch profits through their giant pulp and paper subsidiary, Georgia-Pacific. Nor perhaps did the incoming Obama Administration realize that the 2009 inaugural carpet was made by a Koch subsidiary called INVISTA. What a crummy business deal–the President buys your carpet, then you coordinate hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaires determined to defeat his re-election bid…if only there had been an app!

“I have a question–who bought this Koch Industries carpet? Are you serious?!”

The President’s staff aren’t alone. You may well have Koch products in your house. Continue reading →

Greenpeace Indonesian forests campaigner thanks supporters for recent rainforest conservation news

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After years of campaigning by Greenpeace and other environmental NGOs, Asia Pulp and Paper – one of the world’s largest producers of paper and packaging – have committed to stop deforestation in Indonesia. Greenpeace wants to celebrate this success with its supporters who have contributed so much to this groundbreaking development. Continue reading →

TIMELINE: How you persuaded Asia Pulp & Paper to stop cutting down Indonesia’s rainforests

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This morning, Asia Pulp and Paper – the world’s third largest paper and packaging company – announced that it was turning over a new leaf. It’s promised to stop chopping down Indonesia’s rainforests, home to the last tigers and endangered orangutans.

This breakthrough wouldn’t have happened without your help. Thanks to you, we persuaded over 100 of APP’s biggest customers to take their business elsewhere. Here are some of the highlights from the last two years. Continue reading →

Breakthrough! One of the largest paper companies commits to end deforestation

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One of the 400 wild Sumatran tigers

What do a Barbie, Xerox and National Geographic have in common? Well, after years of hard work, this should finally become clear. Much of the Indonesian rainforest has been chopped down by pulp and paper supplier Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) to make everything from toy packaging to office supplies to glossy magazines. When you’ve helped us win campaigns against brands like Mattel, it’s sent a signal to their supplier, APP, that we’re not willing to buy rainforest destruction. So today, after pressure from you and the businesses that buy from them, APP has announced a ‘Forest Conservation Policy’ aimed at ending its involvement in deforestation. If APP actually comes good on what it’s promised, this is great news for the Indonesian rainforest.  Read below to hear from Greenpeace’s forest campaigner in Indonesia about this remarkable and unprecedented win for the forests.

Today was a day I have at times feared might never come, but I’ve just emerged from a packed press conference in Jakarta for the launch of Asia Pulp & Paper’s new ‘Forest Conservation Policy’ aimed to end its involvement in deforestation. Continue reading →

The ‘beautiful tricks’ played by APP

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Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) said earlier this month it would set aside 20 hectares of peat swamp forest for the rehabilitation of the ramin tree species. It’s hard, however, not to be skeptical about this plan given that APP manages at least 2.5 million hectares of land across Indonesia, much of it in areas of peatland which are ramin habitat.

Ramin is an endangered tree species, protected under Indonesian law and on appendix II of CITES, the international conservation agreement. It’s illegal to cut and trade it without a license. It’s a license that APP does not have.

But earlier this year Greenpeace published the findings of a year-long investigation which repeatedly identified illegal ramin logs waiting to be pulped alongside other rainforest logs at APP’s Indah Kiat pulp mill in Sumatra. Continue reading →

Pleasantly proven wrong by people power

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One of my favorite Lead Activists, Brian, with his local KFC store manager

For this last month here at Greenpeace, I have been involved in the campaign for KFC to drop deforestation from its menus. It has made me all too aware of the colossal scale and pace of deforestation in Indonesia and its devastating consequences for species, communities and the climate.

As recently as the 1960s, more than 80 percent of Indonesia was forested. Today, just under half of Indonesia’s original forest cover remains – one of the reasons that Southeast Asia has the world’s highest rate of deforestation and critically endangered species.

When I was told that 5 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions are now coming from Indonesia, I was horrified, but also galvanized. I knew there was a big fight to be had and I was so ready to get involved!

Continue reading →

KFC’s Dip’em sauces aren’t just for fried chicken. VOTE for which sauce you’d like to see the Colonel dipped in

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And the winner is…

Think voting is over?  Not so fast!  Another big day is coming up on November 15th.  It’s the live “The Big Dip’im” when KFC’s Colonel Sanders will be plunged into a giant bucket of his own sauce.  Which finger-licking condiment will it be?  That’s where you come in. You get to choose which signature sauce we dunk the Colonel in.  Help us give KFC a saucy wake-up call.  Let them know it’s time to drop rainforest destruction off the menu and give animals like the last 400 Sumatran tigers a shot at survival.

In May, Greenpeace launched a global campaign asking KFC to cut forest destruction out of their products.  The good news is, KFC and parent company Yum! brands has finally acknowledged the problem.  And, KFC affiliates have started to address this in markets like the United Kingdom and Indonesia.  But when it comes to rainforest destruction, acceptance is only the first step. Yum! needs a global policy to give deforestation the boot once and for all.

This is why we are dippin’ the Colonel in his own sauce.  KFC has to take the plunge and cut ties with rainforest destroyers like Asia Pulp & Paper.

The only question that remains is which sauce will it be? Honey mustard? What about the new Creamy Buffalo sauce? Or should it be Barbeque? Continue reading →

Rooting for the Tigers

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It’s not just Detroit rooting for the tigers this week. Activists in Denver, L.A.  and San Diego took to the streets to tell KFC ‘Stop turning tiger homes into trash!’

In L.A. folks came out in full force, marching through the Century City Mall and residential areas before arriving out front of a KFC on Pico Blvd. Armed with bongo drums, posters, banners and more, our enthusiasm seemed to rub off on passers by.

Onlookers added their faces to our photo petition, urging KFC to cut ties with rainforest destruction and some even joined in the march itself. Folks driving by honked their horns in support. Most of the people we met had no idea that KFC was destroying the rainforest for throwaway packaging, placing numerous animals on the brink of extinction in the process.

San Diego activists prepare for their event

A sad orangutan in Denver is worried about its habitat.

Hundreds of thousands of people like you have helped us get this far by emailing David Novak, the CEO of KFC’s parent company Yum! KFC is on the verge of doing the right thing if only it can be persuaded to go further. Now we’re emailing Yum!’s Board of Directors, to make sure this gets taken seriously. Add your voice to our petition to help save the Indonesia’s tigers.

Will KFC boss give us the nuggets we need or just more salad dressing?

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KFC recently uploaded a new statement to their website called “Sustainable Sourcing and Waste Recovery”. It looked like this could – if properly taken further – be the start of KFC’s response to the campaign that has seen hundreds of thousands of people take action to tell KFC bosses to stop driving the destruction of rainforests.

Continue reading →