Barbie is safe again - Following Greenpeace campaign Mattel will stop working with APP

Greenpeace won another important battle against APP, this time with Mattel, the largest toy company in the world and maker of the famed Barbie doll line.

We reported here couple of months ago on the ongoing Greenpeace campaign, which was both creative and funny and eventually successful - Mattel announced on a new paper policy, and one of their decisions was to direct their printers not to contract with controversial sources, including APP.

Here's Rolf Skar of Greenpeace talking about their achievement:

You can read more details as well my analysis on this latest round in the fight on of Greenpeace to prove to APP that rainforest destruction is bad for business on Triple Pundit.

More articles on Greenpeace and APP:

Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) - good or bad? ITS is saying APP is good and actually Greenpeace is bad!

Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) - good or bad? Rolf Skar of Greenpeace is replying to Ian Lifshitz

APP - good or bad? An interview with the sustainability manager of the world's most controversial paper company

Photo credit: Greenpeace

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

Greenpeace wants you to think how many trees it takes to make chopsticks next time you order Chinese food!

Greenpeace launched last year a campaign in China to call attention to the urgent need for forest conservation in China. One of the main issues they focused on was chopsticks.

According to statistics from the Forestry Administration, China produced 57 billion pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks in 2009 alone. How many trees were cut down for these chopsticks? According to Greenpeace , the production of disposable chopsticks required wood from 3.8 million trees!

Last year Greenpeace and Ogilvy Beijing have teamed up to plant an eye-catching “chopstick forest” that was displayed outside The Place, a popular shopping center in the heart of Beijing.

Ogilvy explained how it worked:

Over the last several months, Ogilvy worked with Greenpeace, local artist Yinhai Xu and more than 200 volunteers from 20 Chinese universities to collect more than 80,000 pairs of used (and sanitized) disposable wooden chopsticks from restaurants and repurposed them into a forest of chopstick trees that stand approximately 5 meters tall.

Aihong Li, director of Greenpeace's Forest Protection Program, said: “These trees should have been abundantly green and vibrant, but now they are pieced together with wasteful disposable chopsticks. Our hope is that everyone in China will join us in saying "no" to disposable chopsticks to protect our forests.”

Now, 6 months later, Greenpeace is coming out with a video entitled "Disposable Project" that is showing the campaign and calling for greater awareness among chopstick users for the materials the chopsticks are made from. In other words: Trees. Their suggestion? Very simple - replacing wooden chopsticks with a plastic or metal version, a reusable and environmentally-friendly alternative. Think about it next time you order Chinese take-out.



Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

Another victory for Greenpeace - Mattel instructs its suppliers to stop sourcing pulp from APP!

Environmental Leader reported earlier today that "Mattel has pledged to create a sustainable procurement policy and directed suppliers to put a freeze on purchases from Asia Pulp & Paper, following Greenpeace protests over the origin of its packaging."

Mattel wrote on its Facebook page: "We know deforestation is an important issue. It is to us as well. Today we announced the development of a Sustainable Procurement Policy for all of Mattel’s product lines. This policy will require packaging suppliers to commit to sustainable forestry management practices."

Mattel also referred on this page directly to APP:

"Today Mattel launched an investigation into deforestation allegations. While Mattel does not contract directly with Sinar Mas/APP, we have directed our packaging suppliers to stop sourcing pulp from them as we investigate the allegations."

This announcement added Mattel to a growing list of companies that stopped making business with APP, either directly or indirectly following Greenpeace campaigns against APP in the past. These companies include Carrefour , Tesco, Kraft, Nestlé and Unilever. When I asked Ian Lifshitz, Sustainability & Public Outreach Manager at APP, about it in an interview we conducted with him last year, he replied:

APP is a brand umbrella for paper products manufactured by several pulp and paper companies in Indonesia and China. APP operates independently from PT. SMART Tbk's palm oil with different entities, management and shareholders.

Despite the circulating rumours started by the GP report, overall volume of APP products to customers has not been impacted upon. Most our associates know that these rumours are unfounded.

Greenpeace by the way doesn't see in Mattel's announcement the end of story - they wrote on their blog that "Mattel’s latest statement, released on Friday in the US, suggests that the company now recognises it has a deforestation problem. However, it isn’t out of the woods yet and the company must provide more details and clear timelines to show that they are serious about dealing with these issues."

APP's response? According to Environmental Leader, APP responded to the Greenpeace allegations, saying in part, “Greenpeace’s allegation that it found mixed tropical hardwood fibers in some products that we might have produced is meaningless. Indonesia’s pulpwood land concessions, legally provided by the Government of Indonesia, include some degraded forests, which are required by law to be developed into plantations…"

We'll keep you posted with any further developments in this story.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books!

Greenpeace is using Ken and Barbie to protest against Mattel's relationship with APP

What do you think of Barbie? Well, no matter what you have in mind, Greenpeace has news for you:

"Barbie has a nasty deforestation habit - she is trashing rainforests in Indonesia, including areas that are home to some of the last tiger, orang-utans and elephants, just so she can wrap herself in pretty packaging."

Apparently, Ken wasn't aware of it either:



Greenpeace started this campaign against Mattel, the manufacturer of Barbie, accusing it in contributing to deforestation in Indonesia "by using paper packaging for the world's most famous toy from Indonesia's most notorious rainforest destroyer Asia Pulp and Paper (APP)."

Not only that Greenpeace calls supporters to tell Mattel to stop destroying rainforests for toy packaging, but they also extended the protest to Mattel HQ, as our friend, Ralf Skar reported on Greenpeace USA website:

"Wearing baby blue formal wear, Ken and a few buddies paid a visit to the Mattel HQ in Los Angeles today. And, by ‘pay a visit’, I mean they climbed on top of the building, strapped on climbing gear, dangled off the roof outside the windows of awe-struck employees, and hung a 2,500 square foot banner reading “It’s OVER” for Barbie to see. I guess you could say the guy has a flair for the dramatic."

You can see photos of the protest at Mattel HQ on Greenpeace's flickr page.

More articles on Greenpeace and APP:

Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) - good or bad? ITS is saying APP is good and actually Greenpeace is bad!

Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) - good or bad? Rolf Skar of Greenpeace is replying to Ian Lifshitz

APP - good or bad? An interview with the sustainability manager of the world's most controversial paper company

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

How book companies performed on the Greenpeace Boreal Marketplace Review?

Greenpeace published last week its 2010 Boreal Marketplace Performance Review. This study evaluates 23 companies using use forest products from the Boreal Forest on their commitments and concrete actions to protect the Boreal Forest and the endangered woodland caribou.

The review lists 23 companies in four performance categories. The eight criteria that were used to evaluate the performance of these customers were: action on protecting endangered forests, recycling, recycled content and reduction, preference and targets for the uptake of FSC fibre, leadership and advocacy on conservation issues and Boreal Forest protection, labeling and marketing of green products, supplier engagement, communication with conservation organizations and "greenwashing”.

Among the 23 companies there were 5 companies from the book industry, so let's see how they did on this evaluation:

In the top performance category (True Leaders) you can find Indigo Books. In the second best performance category (Positively engaged) you can find Scholastic. The third category (Some small steps) includes Pearson/Penguin and Simon & Schuster and the last performing category (Failing Our Forests) includes Harlequin.

The report doesn't include the companies' performance in each of the 8 categories, but includes some bits of information about some of them:

Other companies such as Simon & Schuster, Pearson/Penguin Books, Capital One, Scholastic and BMR Le Groupe have developed purchasing policies or are in the process of doing so. This is a commitment that Greenpeace supports, so long as the policy contains strong language, clear targets and specific timelines. Lowes, Time Inc. and Transcontinental have also started to engaged directly with their suppliers in relation to their supply, FSC certification, high conservation value forests and caribou habitat.

Several companies are making important strides in this area, and have made efforts to maintain communication with Greenpeace. Unfortunately, other companies have continually ignored our requests for information or had an initial meeting and then stopped communicating. Best Buy, Toys R Us, Harlequin, Xerox, and Boise Cascade are all companies that have NOT been communicative.

There are no details about the Indigo Books, which is the only one of this book list ranked in the top category of True Leaders, but you can learn more on their commitment and their performance (including their support of our Green Books Campaign) on Indigo's environment page.

The full report is available at http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/global/canada/report/2010/12/company-ranking-2010.pdf

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting Sustainable Reading!