French supermarket chains Carrefour and Leclerc decided to withdraw APP / SMG products from their shelves and invites other major retailers to choose responsible paper sources. "Carrefour is committed to sustainable development and has decided to cease sourcing of APP supplies for private label products from mid-year this year until further notice." Carrefour Indonesia external communication manager Hendri Satrio told The Jakarta Post in a letter.
WWF recently exposed that one of the top 20 priority landscapes globally for the survival of the tiger is being is systematically targeted for pulp production by Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), part of Sinar Mas Group, one of the world's largest paper suppliers. This is in breach of company's claims that it doesn't target high quality and high conservation value forest for clearing and that it's carbon footprint is close to neutral.
Several reports show how the company has also impacted the livelihoods and violated the rights of indigenous and traditional communities. Indonesia's rainforests are some of the most biologically diverse forests on the planet. Unfortunately the country, and in particular the island of Sumatra, has one of the fastest rates of deforestation in the world. Moreover, the rapid destruction of Sumatra's natural rainforest - much of which grows on carbon-rich peatlands - to supply APP's pulp mills, releases huge quantities of greenhouse gases. This contributes significantly to the position of Indonesia as the world's third largest global greenhouse gas emitter, behind the U.S. and China.
APP launched an aggressive market campaign to expand its business in Europe. According to the European NGOs doing business with APP at this time supports the further expansion of its operations into Indonesia's last tropical forests and peatlands.
For this reason, 40 European NGOs from Italy, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, Portugal, Malta, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland joined to demand to paper industry to adopt a responsible paper procurement policy.