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11 August, 2008
Strategic, year-long pressure by the Pulp and Paper Workers’ Branch of Australian ICEM affiliate Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) appears to have severed a supply contract between retail grocery chain Woolworths and Indonesian-based Asia Pulp and Paper (APP). The supply arrangement was for kitchen towels and tissue products.
The pressure, countering Woolworth’s environmental claim on packaging of its Select private-label towel and tissue products, came to a head last week when Woolworths announced it had “concluded its contract commitments for the supply of Select paper products.”
The CFMEU is now looking for Australia’s largest retailer to tell the country’s consumers that it will, in fact, rely only on paper producers that adhere to sustainable forest practices.
“If Woolworths has finally decided to do the right thing, they need to show us by a clear and unequivocal statement they will never go back to APP,” said CFMEU’s Pulp and Paper Secretary Alex Millar. They must now prove “they will source their product from Australia and support Australian jobs the way they expect Australian consumers to support them.”
The CFMEU campaign focused on a Woolworths packaging claim that its Select products were sourced from an “environmentally managed company.” In fact, Indonesia’s Centre for International Forestry Research in 2007 found that APP relies on 60-70% of its wood fibre from clearing first-growth, protected forests in Sumatra. And much of that is by using illegal logging practices.
The campaign then discovered that many Select products are made in APP’s Chinese mills, where much of the wood fibre used is also derived through illegal means.
After CFMEU appeals to Woolworths shareholders, most notably in November 2007, the retail chain pulled the Select brands from its shelves. But a few weeks later, those brands were back on the retail market, but without the environmental friendly claim.
Millar says the CFMEU will now recommend to Woolworths paper-producing companies inside Australia which use proven, sustainable fibre sourcing in paper manufacturing.