APP rejects Greenpeace claims on toys

Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) has hit back angrily at an NGO’s appeal to toy manufacturers to stop sourcing materials from the company.

Greenpeace had accused toy companies, including Mattel and Disney, of ‘trashing rainforests and pushing critically endangered wildlife, like tigers, towards extinction’ through their use of APP packaging.

Among claims made in a report on the issue, Greenpeace says the Barbie doll figure is now ‘wrapped in a rainforest destruction scandal’. It told Mattel that it ‘must stop buying packaging from APP, a notorious rainforest destroyer which has been exposed many times for wrecking Indonesia’s rainforests to make throwaway packaging’.

But APP, which has been the subject of many purchaser boycotts in recent years, has responded forthrightly, saying: ‘APP meets the legal requirements for all countries to which we distribute our products throughout the world. Additionally, we follow the legal guidelines of the government of Indonesia.  

‘It is our responsibility to adhere strictly with these laws, not to satisfy the unreasonable and groundless demands of a foreign-based NGO.’

The company claims Greenpeace is trying to ‘play on the emotions of children and their parents’ and ‘attack the industry of a developing nation’.

Furthermore, it questions the scientific validity of Greenpeace’s tests, and points to its goal of 100 per cent sustainable plantation pulpwood by 2015.  

Indonesia loses about 2000 square miles of rainforest every year, and is now the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter, behind only China and the US.