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THE WITNESS
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.
On a hot September afternoon somewhere outside San Jose, four Greenpeacers hashed out a plan to talk with KFC employees and their managers at a KFC franchise restaurant to raise the issue of KFC’s role in rainforest destruction. This was a new tactic for these eager volunteers: Jesse “the Wizard,” his girlfriend Sara “Sassafras,” Eri “the Ninja” and your humble narrator.
The May 2012 Photo of the Month by Melvinas Priananda ties Indonesian rainforest destruction to one of the world’s largest purveyors of fast food. KFC is part of Yum! Brands Inc., which claims to be the world’s largest restaurant company.
Taken on recently cleared and drained rainforest peatland on the island of Sumatra, the giant fast food bag goes to ground zero in a global campaign to convince KFC to stop using throwaway packaging made by destroying the Indonesian rainforest. Continue reading
by Bustar Maitar
The past 10 days have seen a growing chorus of protests aimed at KFC’s destructive packaging while the company has remained totally silent over what action it will take to cut the infamous Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) out of its supply chain.
In India, Greenpeace activists dressed as orangutans held banners emblazoned with “KFC: No Good For Rainforests” outside a KFC store in downtown Delhi
. A follow-up in Kolkata swiftly followed, with more orangutans lining up to demand that KFC stop turning rainforests into trash to make cheap packaging.
Protests took a forensics turn in the Netherlands, with no less than 29 KFC locations turning into “Forest Crime Scenes” depicting the victim of KFC’s destructive packaging sourcing: the critically endangered Sumatran tiger. There are now fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers in the wild, but KFC supplier APP is still pulping the remaining rainforest habitat of these magnificent creatures to fuel its mills. This even includes APP’s own “tiger sanctuary”.
Earlier today we released a report exposing KFC for driving rainforest destruction and pushing tigers toward extinction.
Sadly, KFC executives have responded by putting a big bucket of denial on their heads.
The company first said that 60% of their packaging in the US comes from “sustainable” sources. Then, they said it was 80%. Hmmm. Then, they started to claim that they don’t buy from Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) in the UK or US.
There are so many things wrong with this statements, we’re going to have to take them one by one. Continue reading
Guest post by Wendell Covalt.
My name is Wendell Covalt and I’m a new Greenpeace volunteer. I’m a retired part owner of a computer software company where I did sales and marketing. I’ve supported Greenpeace for many years, and this weekend I organized an event at a local Barnes & Noble to get the company to stop purchasing paper from notorious forest destroyer Asia Pulp & Paper.
By Andy Tait, Senior Campaign Advisor
It is three weeks since we launched ‘The Ramin Paper Trail’ exposing that the logyards at APP’s main pulp mill in Indonesia are riddled with illegal ramin logs. We also released evidence showing that 11 companies, including Xerox, had rainforest fibre from APP in their products.
Although Indonesia’s authorities have yet to act on our evidence in Indonesia most of the companies we named are now taking some action to tackle their links to APP. In total eight companies, including Danone and National Geographic, have responded positively to the campaign. Among them Mondi’s response stands out because the company simply put its hands up and confirmed the trade links we had uncovered between it and APP, and agreed to tackle the weaknesses in its policies head on.
By contrast with Mondi and others, Xerox seems to be in a state of denial or confusion. Its public statement claims polices were ‘put in place years ago’ that ensure it has already ceased trading ‘on a global basis’ with APP. Our evidence reveals that Xerox has continued to buy directly from APP throughout 2010 and 2011. In both years, Xerox Hellas (Greece) imported copy paper directly from APP’s Indah Kiat Perawang mill in Indonesia.
Consequently, in December 2011, Greenpeace was able to buy Xerox products in the marketplace coming from APP. Samples of the Xerox-branded copy paper, named ‘Astro’ were bought in Greece and sent to an independent laboratory to test for the presence of Indonesian rainforest fibres (ie Mixed Tropical Hardwoods, MTH). Some 50 percent of the sample was MTH.
So, come on Xerox, let’s face the facts: Given that your own-brand copy paper ‘Astro’ was made by APP in Indonesia using rainforest fibres and was imported into and sold in Greece in 2011, then your ‘No APP’ policy clearly isn’t working.
Help us convince Xerox to stop papering over the cracks in its policies.
Another blow has been delivered to the credibility of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), thanks to some excellent work by WWF. In a survey of the certification bodies that APP regularly references to prop up its flimsy claims of sustainability, none of them would support APP’s assertions about its environmental performance. Continue reading
