Green paper needs Reflex action

Ben Butler
The Age,  May 30, 2011

Wilderness Society protesters dressed in ‘Victoria’s Secret’ lingerie earlier this month to expose Victoria’s 'dirty little secret' – woodchipping native forests to make Reflex Paper that is sold in Officeworks. Photo: Edwina Pickles

REFLEX, Australia's best-known brand of paper, is set to lose its international green accreditation within the next two months unless its manufacturer can strike an unlikely deal with some of its fiercest enemies.

The loss of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification would force Australian Paper, which makes Reflex, to either abandon its public commitment to the FSC process or shift its sourcing from native forests to more expensive plantation timber.

News that Australian Paper's international certification is at risk will come as an embarrassment to Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh, who recently threatened to take forestry jobs away from the Yarra Ranges Council unless it ends a boycott of Reflex paper.

It also threatens Victoria's state-owned logger VicForests, a key supplier of native forest woodchips to Australian Paper.

Australian Paper's problem arises because FSC rules have been tightened since its certificate was issued five years ago. Under the new rules, the company must consult with stakeholders over logging in ''high conservation value'' areas.

Australian Paper's certificate expires on July 26, leaving it little time to reach consensus with environment groups, many of whom oppose logging in forests containing endangered species.

Complicating the process, one of the groups, Central Highlands-based MyEnvironment, has lodged a complaint about Australian Paper's auditor, Smartwood, with the FSC head office in Germany.

The complaint has sparked an international review of Smartwood, a division of environmental standards body Rainforest Alliance, that could lead to its authority to audit wood supply being revoked.

''My understanding is that we could, in theory, be suspended, but we're a long way from that,'' said Smartwood spokeswoman Anita Neville.

''If they find flaws in the system, corrective action is required.''

She said that under the ''annex 3'' system, which governs consultations over high conservation areas, ''100 per cent agreement'' between Australian Paper and environment groups was not required.

''You have to eliminate the worst cases of disagreement, and that's not always easy,'' she said.

FSC Australia chief executive Michael Spencer said that under the organisation's rules, Australian Paper needed to consult with all stakeholders with an interest in the forest, including environmental groups.

Asked what would happen if no deal had been struck by July 27, he said: ''My understanding would be, and I haven't dealt with this in the past, their certificate would lapse if it hasn't been renewed.''

MyEnvironment director Sarah Rees said Australian Paper had made contact with her on Thursday. ''We're really receptive to helping the company move its wood supply from native forest to the burgeoning plantation sector,'' she said.

In any case, she said, the Black Saturday bushfires had slashed the amount of wood left in native forests to about two years worth of supply.

''The real opportunity for the company is to get the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society and local environment groups standing by them saying, 'Job well done'.''

Australian Paper spokesman John Rider did not return calls.

Last year, chief executive Jim Henneberry publicly committed the company to FSC principles, including not obtaining wood from high conservation areas.

In a statement, VicForests spokesman David Walsh said the logging company ''supports Australian Paper's work to achieve certification to a range of industry standards - including its efforts to maintain FSC certification''.

Google under fire for dumping paper ad

Julian Lee
Sydney Morning Herald, February 1, 2011

GOOGLE has been accused of stifling free speech after it banned an ad attacking a paper manufacturer over its environmental record.

The Wilderness Society paid to have its ad on Google promoting a boycott against a paper manufacturer that uses wood sourced from Australian old growth forests.

When web users typed ''office paper'', ''office stationery'' or the brand names Australian Paper and Reflex into Google, a link to the Wilderness Society's website, Ethical Paper, would appear at the top of the search engine's listings.

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But after a complaint by the company at the centre of the boycott, Australian Paper, Google removed the ads saying that because the society did not own the trademark for the popular paper brand, Reflex, it could not use the name in its ads.

Google says it introduced the policy in 2002 to protect the intellectual copyright of advertisers.

But the Wilderness Society's Sydney campaigner Peter Cooper said Google's policy did not apply as his organisation was not trying to sell anything but rather to bring an issue to the public's attention.

''The internet is a very important place for debate in our society and an issue as important as this needs to discussed in a public forum and a policy such as this prevents that,'' he said.

The society's Google ads have since been replaced by one for an Australian Paper website defending its environmental policies. Turning the table on the society, the paper manufacturer has bought the search terms ''ethical paper'' in order to generate traffic to its site rather than the society's. However by yesterday afternoon the ads had disappeared from Google.

Freedom of speech campaigners said Google was using its muscle - more than 90 per cent of online searches in Australia are on Google - to prevent a balanced debate.

The president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Cameron Murphy, said Google's behaviour was similar to that of other internet businesses such as Amazon and PayPal which, in the wake of the diplomatic cables dump last year, cited violations of their terms of service to sever ties with WikiLeaks.

''I am concerned Google is allowing a trademark policy to prevent one side of the debate from being heard,'' Mr Murphy said.

Google said it encouraged disputing parties to settle the differences between themselves. ''Google is not an arbiter of these disputes,'' a spokeswoman said.

Activists attack sustainability claim

Ben Butler
Sydney Morning Herald, January 31, 2011

ENVIRONMENTALISTS have made corporate Australia their number one target as they ramp up pressure on the producers of the top paper brand Reflex to stop using timber logged from native forests.

The battle between the Wilderness Society and Australian Paper has spilled into cyberspace: last week the company convinced Google to stop showing advertisements for the environmental organisation's ''ethical paper'' campaign.

Wilderness Society activists are planning to target Reflex stockists, including Wesfarmers' subsidiaries Officeworks and Coles and new US entrant Staples, which took over Corporate Express last year.

The organisation is also considering legal action against Australian Paper under the Trade Practices Act because a company website appears to endorse allegedly misleading fact sheets created by the Victorian government-owned logger, VicForests.

Luke Chamberlain, the Wilderness Society's Victorian forest campaigner, said woodchips from state-owned native forests received a government subsidy worth hundreds of millions of dollars, creating an unfair price advantage over plantation-sourced chips.

''It's not an even playing field here - this is corporate socialism whereby VicForests is acting as a middleman handing over a public asset for private profit,'' he said.

''The question to Australian Paper is why do we continue to rip out a public resource, extinguish a public asset, when [there are] perfectly good alternatives?''

He said the Wilderness Society had sent letters to corporate social responsibility officers at 2500 leading companies, and on Thursday began a phone campaign to follow up with the top 400 companies.

Fund managers will be the campaign's next targets, and the organisation is considering a print media advertising campaign.

Feedback from corporates so far had been ''incredibly positive'', Mr Chamberlain said. ''Obviously we're dealing with some of the major distributors of Australian Paper,'' he said. ''They don't want to have environment groups on their back - they spruik their environmental credentials and I think their branding is potentially at risk if we target them.''

Wesfarmers, Australia's eighth biggest company, already bears the scars of an earlier battle with the Wilderness Society. After a long campaign that included embarrassing protests outside its Bunnings hardware stores, the chain switched from native forest timber to plantation wood.

Mr Chamberlain said the Wilderness Society had been talking with Australian Paper about moving away from native forests for ''probably five to six years''.

''So far Australian Paper has buried its head in the sand,'' he said. The stoush flared up online last week with Google pulling down Wilderness Society advertisements that appeared above search results for Reflex, after a complaint from Australian Paper. The company, a subsidiary of Japan's Nippon Paper Group, has hit back with a website entitled ''Ethical paper - the facts'' that mimics features of the Wilderness Society's ethical paper campaign site.

On that website, its says more than half its total fibre needs come from plantation timber and recycled paper. ''The remainder is sourced through VicForests which is a Victorian government enterprise responsible for the sustainable harvest and commercial sale of wood from state forests,'' the company said.

In a separate statement issued on Friday, Australian Paper said it ''welcomes open discussion from all stakeholders about our performance''. It said it employed about 1200 people and the industry had been hit by the closure of two Tasmanian mills last year at a cost of 300 jobs.

''Our plight is not unlike that of Kimberly-Clark whose Millicent tissue mill in South Australia faces closure and the loss of 170 jobs in May,'' the company said. ''Our statements and claims are independently checked and comply with Australian Competition and Consumer Commission guidelines.''

Mr Chamberlain said VicForests fact sheets on the company's ethical paper - the facts website were ''mythology and propaganda''.

''We'll be taking that up now with the ACCC as part of this campaign.'' He said it was practical for Australian Paper to use only recycled paper and plantation-sourced timber.

''We're looking for Australian paper to show leadership in true sustainability and create a much greater recycled paper industry.''