Press release – 14 August, 2011Calls on Officeworks and other retailers to followSydney, Thursday 4 August 2011: Greenpeace welcomes the announcement made by Fuji Xerox Australia overnight to immediately suspend relations with Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) following the exposé of its destructive logging practices in Indonesia on the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent.
“APRIL has a long history of destructive logging in Sumatra, eliminating wildlife habitat and creating social conflict with communities who have been pushed out by APRIL’s activities. There has also been evidence of corruption involving APRIL’s logging subsidiaries,” said Bustar Maitar, Head of Greenpeace’s Forest campaign in Indonesia.
“This decision from Fuji Xerox Australia is welcomed by Greenpeace and we look forward to it being brought in by Fuji Xerox internationally,” said Maitar.
Australians are unwittingly buying products from illegal and destructive logging every day due to the poor policies of retailers.
“Other Australian companies and retailers need to take a good hard look at where their pulp and paper products come from and ask whether they want to be complicit in the destruction of the last remaining rainforests of Indonesia,” said Reece Turner, Forests Campaigner with Greenpeace Australia Pacific.
“In particular, Officeworks needs to explain how it can justify selling such large volumes of copy paper from APRIL,” said Turner.
Greenpeace  is campaigning to save what’s left of Indonesia’s rainforests and expose the companies involved in their destruction. In Australia, Greenpeace has recently targeted another notorious pulp and paper giant, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP).
In 2004, Fuji Xerox blacklisted APP for its role in rainforest destruction. (1)
Contact
: Greenpeace Communications Officer, Jessa Latona – 0488 208 465
Notes
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1.
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2011/Indonesia%20paper.pdf
Fuji Xerox Australia statement on Sustainable Paper Sourcing