FW: [NFPA] Miami Herald: Office Depot Dumps Paper Supplier on Account of Clear-Cutting Logging Practice

Here's something positive a' happening.
 
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Andrew George
Sent: February 23, 2004 1:19 PM
To: NFPA News
Subject: [NFPA] Miami Herald: Office Depot Dumps Paper Supplier on
Account of Clear-Cutting Logging Practice


THE MIAMI HERALD

Posted on Mon, Feb. 23, 2004









Office Depot Dumps Paper Supplier on Account of Clear-Cutting Logging
Practice


By Linda Rawls, The Palm Beach Post, Fla. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business
News

Feb. 21 - Office Depot, the largest office-supplies company in the
world, will no longer buy products from giant Asia Pulp and Paper Co.
because APP's logging operations are destroying rain forests in Sumatra,
Office Depot said Friday.

Delray Beach-based Office Depot (NYSE: ODP, $17.93) supported the World
Wildlife Federation's attempts to get Singapore-based Asia Pulp and
Paper -- the 10th-largest paper company in the world -- to stop a
logging practice called clear-cutting. This method of cutting down trees
has destroyed the rain-forest habitat of endangered Sumatran elephants
and tigers, Office Depot officials and environmentalists said.

Asia Pulp and Paper (NYSE: APP, $27.04) is the first company Office
Depot has stopped doing business with because of Office Depot's policy,
adopted in April, not to use products that come from rare and vulnerable
forests, or from forests with exceptional conservation values, said
Tyler Elm, the firm's director of environmental affairs.

Sumatra, a large Indonesian island just south of the Malay Peninsula,
has a wealth of natural resources, including rain forests, plants and
animals, and Amazon-like rivers.

"This ongoing harvesting of Sumatra's rare and valuable natural forests
and the resulting negative effects are inconsistent with our corporate
values and environmental policies," Elm said.

Asia Pulp and Paper did not return a reporter's telephone call Friday to
its U.S. headquarters in Cerritos, Calif.

Office Depot officials did not know how long the company has been buying
products from Asia Pulp and Paper, nor the dollar amount of that
business.

But the boycott has far-reaching effects because Office Depot -- which
had 2003 sales of more than $12 billion in 22 countries -- will not buy
items from any other companies that use pulp, fiber or paper from Asia
Pulp and Paper Co. to make their products.

"If you make envelopes, you may buy your pulp, and even the paper, from
Asia Pulp and Paper," Elm said. "We told one company that wasn't
acceptable, that they had to find another source."

Asia Pulp and Paper has agreed to set aside part of the Sumatran forest
as a national park, wildlife federation officials said, but the company
still proposes to cut 445,000 acres of natural forest in the next two
years.

"We're asking retail customers who buy from Asia Pulp and Paper to
consider how their purchasing affects the forest and the endangered
Sumatran elephants and tigers that live there," said Tom Dillon,
director of the wildlife federation's Species Conservation Program.

The federation did not ask retailers to boycott Asia Pulp and Paper,
said Jan Vertefeuille, the wildlife group's senior communications
officer. However, Office Depot said its investigation of the company
convinced it that Asia Pulp and Paper could not change its logging
operations to meet environmental concerns and remain a viable company.

"Our first choice is to pressure companies to change their practices,"
said Elm, Office Depot's environmental director. "We didn't feel that
was possible in this case."

Framingham, Mass.-based Staples (NYSE: SPLS, $25.47), the No. 2
office-supplies company, also supported the wildlife federation's
negotiations with Asia Pulp and Paper, but has not boycotted its
products, the federation said. To date, only Office Depot has taken that
drastic step.

Office Depot is evaluating all its suppliers "product by product," Elm
said, and will stop doing business with any other companies that violate
its new environmental policy.

-----

To see more of The Palm Beach Post -- including its homes, jobs, cars
and other classified listings -- or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost

C 2004, The Palm Beach Post, Fla. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Business News. ODP, SPLS,

 

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