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Creating Cup Consciousness

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In Tasmania, Australia, Markets for Change is gathering support for a world without throwaway cups, through an exciting movement for ‘Cup Conscious Cafes’. These are cafes who guarantee that customers will always be welcome to bring their own reusable cup for a takeaway coffee or tea.

Markets for Change launched their campaign as part of EPN’s international day of action to launch our Cupifesto at the end of September. Peg Putt, director of Markets for Change, said, ‘We all love grabbing a coffee from our local cafe in the mornings, but did you know that most disposable coffee cups aren’t recyclable or biodegradable? In fact, the cost on our planet of our coffee cups is astronomical! That’s why we are getting local Hobart cafes to sign on as cup conscious cafés.’

Dozens of cafés in Hobart have already signed up as ‘Cup Conscious Cafés’, and are proudly displaying stickers to indicate their support for the campaign.

Now Markets for Change is seeking ‘Cup Conscious Champions’ to volunteer to help spread the movement around Australia. It won’t be long before there are ‘Cup Conscious Communities’ where all the cafés will have signed up.

It is estimated that 58 billion paper cups are thrown away globally each year. That’s one million tonnes of paper, or 32 million trees and 100 billion litres of water, emitting as much greenhouse gas as half a million cars. It’s a mountain of waste that has serious environmental consequences.

The aim of Markets for Change’s campaign is to encourage people to use their own reusable cups as a way of minimising the mountains of waste, deforestation, pollution and CO2 emissions which come from our widespread use of throwaway coffee cups. The idea is to reward cafés who help their customers to take the simple action of drinking from the same cup more than once.

Peg Putt says, ‘Look for the ‘Cup Conscious Café’ sticker at your local coffee shop to see if they are participating. If not, do ask them to show their support for a more sustainable approach to our coffee culture. We are looking for ‘Cup Conscious Champions’ to volunteer to help roll out the movement across Australia and elsewhere.’ You can sign on to volunteer as a Cup Conscious Champion here: http://www.marketsforchange.org/volunteer

Check out the list of cup conscious cafes in Hobart here: http://www.marketsforchange.org/cupifesto and keep watching while this movement grows and grows!

Markets for Change is one of EPN’s Australian member organisations. Based in Tasmania, it is a group of campaigners who have taken the fight to protect Australian and other forests directly to the companies that drive and profit from their destruction. Market-focused campaigning is an exciting alternative to traditional campaign efforts to produce policy change, which is becoming increasingly relevant as politicians are elected who are uninterested in or even hostile to environmental and human rights issues.

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Indonesian civil society writes to Banks: APRIL failing to implement its own policy

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The environmental coalition Jikalahari and the network of local communities of Riau province, JMGR, have sent two letters to banks, one each to Credit Suisse and ABN Amro, to share some concerns over what is happening on the ground in APRIL’s concessions in the Riau Province (in Sumatra, Indonesia).

trashed-peatland-indonesiaCredit Suisse has committed to help its customer APRIL to deliver a visible change in its activities. ABN Amro also has business with APRIL, and last May was involved in a new deal with this company for US$800 million, through a syndicated loan.

According to the local communities, the APRIL group and its subsidiary PT RAPP has been so far unable to implement its own policy, to comply with regulations in Indonesia regarding peat protection and peat management or to implement regulations regarding setting aside areas for local communities’ livelihood trees.

APRIL subsidiaries illegally keep building canals, planting in burned peatlands that should be restored, and even forbidding official inspection teams to visit their concessions. Social conflicts with local communities are not being addressed, as the company promised they would be, and its agreements are violated by the plantation companies.

Furthermore, business-as-usual peat management is draining large areas of peatlands in the Kampar peninsula, releasing huge amounts of CO2 every year and creating risks of new waves of fires. Last year’s peat fires caused the death of 5 Riau residents; 3 of which were children, and more than 87,000 people suffered from respiratory diseases, while the county suffered $935m of damage. Six APRIL subsidiaries have been investigated by the Police Department in relation with the fires, but still the company has failed to stop draining peat. This practice will also cause soil subsidence, leading to extensive flooding in the rainy season, while the dry season is affected by fires.

The civil society groups have asked the banks to make sure that their clients will be able to prove full compliance with laws and regulations, to promptly address social conflicts and to stop draining peat.

The letter to Credit Suisse

The letter to ABN Amro

Climate change emissions from a pulp mill

Red Lines for pulp mill finance – a webinar and a Chinese version

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Earlier this year, we published  Green Paper, Red Lines. 

The document  is a briefing for financiers, which sets out minimum requirements for pulp and paper companies. We ask all those involved in financing the industry to avoid any projects or companies that do not meet these Red Lines. To help explain this important document, we are running a webinar about it on 13 December, and have now translated it into Chinese.

As the world’s biggest consumer of paper, China is a major player in financing the pulp industry, and it is becoming of increasing importance. We have therefore translated the Red Lines into Chinese, to make it easier for Chinese bankers to know what civil society requests them not to invest in: Green Paper Red Lines, Chinese translation.

China has strong legislation, in the form of the Green Credit Guidelines, to regulate overseas investment by Chinese financial institutions. We are currently analysing how our Red Lines can best be used alongside these Guidelines. We look forward to constructive engagement with Chinese banks and other financial organisations.

We are hosting a webinar on Tuesday 13 December 2016 at 1400 UT, aimed at bankers and investors, to explain why the Red Lines are so important. Please contact hag at environmentalpaper.eu if you are interested in taking part.

Read more about the Red Lines here.

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Paludiculture workshop: local community solutions to sustaining peatlands in Indonesia

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The Environmental Paper Network is helping to host a workshop in Indonesia to share knowledge about paludiculture, sustainable management of peat soils and solutions to the peatland degradation caused by the paper industry. Sergio Baffoni gives a flavour of the discussions.

There is a palm that produces bread, a vine to braid baskets, a grass to weave carpets.  For decades, local people have successfully planted crops that are native to peat wetlands, such as sago, rattan, jelutung, purun and other native plants, which awetlands-people-indonesiassured their livelihoods and food security, while not threatening other sources of livelihoods, such as fishing and gathering. This culture is based on the natural environment, does not require the use of fire or drainage and keeps the soil healthy.

Even on degraded and drained peat lands, such as in areas deforested by government-sponsored projects or by plantation expansion, and even in areas devastated by fire, local communities have struggled to develop fire-free horticulture methods that prevent soil subsidence, flooding in the wet season and fires in the dry season.

This knowledge has cost years of expepaludiculture-workshop-2016-2rimentation and exhausting work, but almost nobody knows about it. This is why Wetlands International and Jikalahari, a network of environmental organizations in Sumatra, with the support of EPN and CLUA, have organised a workshop to compare local communities experience in paludiculture on peat.

Paludiculture means planting on water keeping the peat wet, using local species that grow naturally on peat. “We have done it for centuries,” says Syaripudin Gusar, from a village in South Sumatra. “Now palm oil and acacia plantations have taken all the land, and only 300 hectares of purun grass remains to our community, 7 hours by boat from the village.” But purun artisanal manufacturing is their identity, so they don’t give up.

“To plant without burning you have to find the right plant, the right species,” says Akhmad Tamuruddin, from Borneo. He arrived in Borneo 34 years ago, with other transmigrants. He was given a little piece of land in the middle of the nowhere, and nothing more. “We had to use fire to open it up. I used fire too, I have to admit it. But every time you burn the land, it goes down several centimetres. You have to burn it every time you sow, it’s half a meter in five years, it’s madness. So I stopped. It has been hard work, but paludiculture-expertnow nearby areas are getting flooded every heavy rain, while my land remains dry.”

“We planted sago before independence,” says Abdul Manan from the Meranti Islands, in the Straits of Malacca. Sago is a kind of palm with a spongy centre that it is edible. “We do not need fertilizers, the ponds are full of fishes, we don’t have to dry or burn the peat, it’s not a monoculture. We make noodles, porridge, chips, and even sugar from it.” Then a company arrived and planted sago by cutting the forest, digging canals, drying and burning peat, followed by a pulp and paper company (connected to APRIL), which also started to cut the forest, dig canals, dry and burn peat. The villagers resisted, in order to protect their gardens, their forest and their traditional way of life. Now they are blocking the canals. They still produce sago.

In the workshop, other successful experiences of living on peat without destroying it are exchanged. Then villagers from different provinces ask each other how much it costs to work peat with mineral soil to avoid fire, whether it is possible to plant rattan between Rambutan fruit trees instead of between rubber trees, and how to commercialize sago. They are many pieces of local wisdom, and together they can become a systemic solution to preserve forest, climate and local development.paludiculture-workshop-2016

Industrial development followed a very different path. As well as the palm oil industry, the pulp and paper industry has developed a highly destructive model based on large scale monoculture of alien species, which requires peat degradation. Land that local communities managed according to traditional wisdom has been robbed, cleared and drained. Canals cut into the peat bogs have drained waste land areas, released huge amounts of CO2 and made them prone to forest fires and subsidence.

These industries should learn from the local communities, and change their silviculture model or leave the ground to other people who can manage it better for the future of Indonesia. After the peat fire crisis last year, which impacted the health of millions of petrashed-peatland-indonesiaople in Indonesia and neighbouring countries, leading to several deaths and releasing more than one billion tonnes of CO2, the pulp and paper industry cannot delay any longer.

Peat soil must be protected by keeping the water level high or by rewetting if drained. Peat has to be planted with local species that can survive in swamps. Among these there are species that can produce paper fibre. The monoculture model has to be turned into a new landscape-based mosaic approach, which includes restoration of natural forest, community based paludiculture and agroforestry, and paludiculture-based fibre plantations for papermaking.

For those unable to attend, we will be hosting a webinar on paper industry impacts on peatlands in Indonesia, by Bas Tinhout of Wetlands International, at 0900 UT on Tuesday 22 November 2016. Contact hag (@) environmentalpaper.eu for details of how to join the webinar.

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EPN Co-ordinated a Successful Day of Action on Throwaway Cups and Launch of the Cupifesto

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Last week saw a flurry of activity around the world with many EPN member organisations challenging throwaway cups. The launch of our Cupifesto – a manifesto for a world without throwaway cups –  was fun and attracted significant attention (see this article in The Guardian, for example).

In Australia, ‘cup conscious cafes’ were signing up to the Cupifesto. In China, lots of local organisations promoted reusable and often very beautiful tea vessels. In Germany there were challenges to fast drinks retailers who only give their customers a throwaway option, and there were also celebrations of reusable cups ranging from traditional ceramic coffee mugs to modern plastic keep-cups. In the USA activists were out on the street highlighting the huge problem of unrecyclable cups. In the UK intensive discussion raged about discounts for customers who bring their own cups and taxes on those who don’t. And all around the world, people blogged, tweeted, facebooked and just chatted about throwaway cups.

One of the interesting results of all this discussion is a poll run by Packaging Newsthe packaging industry magazine, asking if a tax on throwaway cups is a good idea. At the time of writing (5 October, day 3 of the poll), two-thirds of respondents are in favour of a cup tax: 40% say ‘Yes – we drastically need to reduce takeaway cups’ and a further 26% say ‘Yes, but the money raised should be invested in recycling infrastructure’. Only a minority of respondents, even in the packaging industry, think that throwaway cups are not a problem.

It’s clearly time for more leadership to move us towards a future where our daily tea and coffee does not cost the earth. Watch this space as we continue to work together to promote the Cupifesto – a manifesto for a world without throwaway cups.

International Day of Action on Throwaway Cups

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through-away-kreis-grau-schwarzer-randMEDIA RELEASE: Civil society organisations around the world are taking action on Thursday 29 September 2016 to raise awareness that using throwaway cups causes harm to people, forests, water and the climate. The Environmental Paper Network (EPN) is launching its ‘Cupifesto – A Manifesto for No Throwaway Cups’ urging drinks retailers and politicians all over the world to stop encouraging a throwaway culture, by ensuring all cups are reusable.

Mandy Haggith, co-ordinator of the Environmental Paper Network said, ‘Throwaway cups, whether made of paper, Styrofoam or plastic, are an icon of wasteful resource use, and of the unthinking acceptance of ever increasing volumes of disposable commodities. It is unacceptable that we drink from single-use vessels instead of beautiful pottery, tough plastic or elegant steel. The Cupifesto is a call to fast food and drinks companies and politicians to ensure everyone has the option of drinking tea and coffee from reusable vessels. Our message is simple – no throwaway cups.’

At least 58 billion throwaway cups are used each year globally, using more than a million tonnes of paper. Their production requires 32 million trees, 100 billion litres of water (that’s 43 thousand Olympic swimming pools) and emits as much greenhouse gases as half a million cars. Hardly any throwaway cups are recycled.

Several EPN member organisations are campaigning on paper cups on this international day of action, including NGOs in Germany, USA, Australia, China and Finland.

Jannis Pfendtner of Robin Wood, Germany, said, “More than 10 billion throwaway cups are used in Germany each year – the waste issue is huge! Many companies such as the German bakery BackWerk do not even have ceramic or reusable dishes anymore. Wasting precious wood for a cup, which is only in use for a few minutes, is crazy.”

The North American group Stand has launched a “Better Cup” campaign targeting Starbucks. Their Executive Director, Todd Paglia, said, “Starbucks coffee cups destroy forests and our climate. It’s time Starbucks provide sufficient incentives to motivate their customers to bring their own cups, and make their cups fully recyclable everywhere.”

Peg Putt, Chief Executive Officer of Markets for Change, Australia, said, “We’ve launched a ‘cup conscious cafe’ movement in Australia to indicate that cafes welcome reusable cups, and most cafes in central Hobart, Tasmania have already joined. They proudly display the cup conscious cafe sticker to inform customers.”

The Environmental Paper Network (EPN) is a coalition of more than 140 environmental and social non-governmental organisations from 28 countries, who all share a Global Paper Vision for sustainable future paper production and use. The first pillar of this vision is to reduce global paper consumption.

The Cupifesto is published with relevant background information and resources here: http://environmentalpaper.eu/cupifesto

For more information contact Mandy Haggith  +44 (0)1571 844020

Red Lines for Pulp Mill Finance

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The Environmental Paper Network* (EPN), and BankTrack** today published a short document, Green Paper, Red Lines,  setting out minimum requirements for the pulp and paper industry to avoid harming people and the environment. This document urges banks and investors who consider financially supporting pulp and paper companies to thoroughly check whether these companies are on the right side of these ‘red lines’.

The ‘red lines’, listed in the document, are the absolute minimum requirements for pulp and paper mills, and cover regulatory, social, environmental and corporate issues. Unless pulp and paper mills fulfil these requirements, they are likely to cause unacceptable social and environmental harm.

The standards are absolute minimum requirements. Companies that achieve these standards are not automatically deemed to be operating in a sustainable manner. However, if companies, and financiers providing support to them, cross these red lines, they are highly likely to be the target of campaigns by civil society organisations.

EPN and BankTrack therefore expect financiers to stay clear if their client pulp and paper companies are unable to meet the minimum requirements.

Mandy Haggith, co-ordinator of the Environmental Paper Network’s pulp finance working group, said: “We want banks and other investors to be our allies in helping to transform the pulp and paper industry towards our Global Paper Vision, by focusing finance only where the industry is sustainable. We hope these red lines will be used by banks to avoid projects and companies with a high level of reputational risk due to their negative environmental and social impacts.”

Karen Vermeer, forest and Equator Principles campaigner at BankTrack, said: “We will use the red lines of this document to check the forest policies of private sector banks, and push for more sustainable policies where necessary.”

* EPN is a network of more than 140 non-governmental organisations globally, focussing on pulp and paper sustainability issues across the global supply chain and paper’s life cycle.

** BankTrack is the international tracking, campaigning and NGO support organisation focused on private sector commercial banks and the activities they finance.

Link(s)

Contact

  • Mandy Haggith | | +44 7734235704
  • Karen Vermeer | | +31 24 3249220

Paper Saving Summit

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wistonlodge

If you get frustrated by junk mail, paper cups, disposable napkins, catalogues, packaging or pointless photocopying, you need to come to the Paper Saving Summit.

On 31 May 2016, people will gather from around the world for a summit about paper saving at Wiston Lodge in the Scottish borders. We will be discussing how we can achieve the first goal of the Global Paper Vision: to reduce global paper consumption. Our goal is to be
both inspiring and practical, having fun but also resulting in a viable joint paper saving campaign. So far we have participants from around Europe, China, Australia, USA and Canada and the more the merrier.

The event will begin with a Paper Saving Passions Catwalk, where participants will give creative expression to their passions, irritations, ideas and projects about paper saving. We’ll have market stalls, where details of current campaigns will be shared, and we’ll be bouncing around frightening facts about paper waste to keep us motivated, while also  exploring solutions on which we can work together.

There will be lots of opportunities for discussion, so whether you have a practical project that is going well, or just know paper consumption is a problem but have no idea where to start, this meeting is for you. Come along, be inspired and get active.

All member organisations of the Environmental Paper Network are welcome to take part. Bookings can be made by following this link.

For guidance about preparation for the summit and the agenda, see here.

Contact for more information.

New Indonesia mill raises doubts about APP’s forests pledge

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A landmark commitment by one of the world’s largest producers of tissue and paper to stop cutting down Indonesia’s prized tropical forests is under renewed scrutiny as the company prepares to open a giant pulp mill in South Sumatra. To fanfare more than three years ago, Asia Pulp and Paper promised to use only plantation woods after an investigation by one of its strongest critics, Greenpeace, showed its products were partly made from the pulp of endangered trees.


Greenpeace welcomed the announcement as a breakthrough and the company, long reviled by activists as a villain, rebranded itself as a defender of the environment, helping it to win back customers that had severed ties. At the same time, it was pressing ahead behind the scenes with plans to build a third pulp mill in Indonesia.

When it went public with its plans for the OKI mill in 2013, APP announced it would produce 2 million tons a year and then earlier this year acknowledged the mill’s capacity could in the future increase to 2.8 million tons.

New research released Wednesday by a dozen international and Indonesian environmental groups estimates that APP will face a significant shortfall in its supply of plantation-grown wood after the new mill begins operating, even at a 2.0 million ton capacity. The company could then face a choice between using higher-cost imported wood or looking the other way as its suppliers encroach upon virgin forests.

“APP, while it has been presenting itself as a champion of zero deforestation, is building one of the world’s biggest pulp mills,” said Christopher Barr of Woods & Wayside International, one of the organizations involved with the report.

“There will be a great deal of pressure to ensure it receives adequate supplies of wood to keep it operating at full capacity,” he said. “Our analysis shows the group’s existing planted area in South Sumatra is unlikely to produce the volumes of wood the mill is expected to consume at projected capacity levels.”

How the mill, which could operate for more than half a century, is fed will be a factor in the survival of Indonesia’s tropical forests and the endangered wildlife they shelter. More generally, the draining and destruction of peatlands for forestry or agriculture will over decades release vast amounts of carbon that could jeopardize Indonesia’s ability to meet its emission reduction targets under an international agreement due to be signed within days.

The report estimates that APP’s plantations in South Sumatra have never produced half of the wood needed to feed a 2.0 million ton a year pulp operation. That shortfall is compounded by devastating forest and peatland fires across Indonesia last year that destroyed more than a quarter of APP’s planted trees in South Sumatra, according to an on-the-ground survey by Hutan Kita Institute and other civil society groups.

The company said it would it respond to concerns about the mill.
APP is the crown jewel of the Sinar Mas conglomerate, one of Southeast Asia’s largest companies. For a time it was a pariah in financial markets after defaulting in 2001 on $13.9 billion of debt, which still ranks as the biggest default by a company from a developing nation. It has secured Chinese funding for the OKI mill.

The draining of peatlands, which make up the bulk of the concession land in South Sumatra that supplies APP, is a fraught issue for Indonesia’s neighbors. Record fires on peatlands and forests last year caused $16 billion of losses for Indonesia, according to the World Bank, and sent a smoky, health-damaging haze across the country and into Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

The mill and its plantations, meanwhile, affect the livelihoods of thousands of people who have lived for decades on land used by APP. The company is embroiled in hundreds of land use conflicts across Indonesia and has yet to reach an agreement with any community after vowing to settle such disputes in 2013

Once the new mill begins operating, “I think it will be even more difficult for communities to get their land back” said Aidil Fitri, of Hutan Kita Institute, which is advocating for two communities in conflict with APP in South Sumatra.

“Now they have OKI mill and we believe they need more lands for their plantations,” he said. “On the other side, the communities who have conflicts with APP need their lands back for their livelihood, to do agriculture, not for acacia plantations.”

Greenpeace forests campaigner Andy Tait said APP has maintained it will only supply the mill with plantation or imported wood. But he acknowledged that APP’s assessment that its plantation wood supply is adequate predates last year’s “horrendous” fires, which heavily affected the company.

“We don’t see any sign of APP pulling back from its commitments on no deforestation at this stage and it would obviously be commercial suicide for them to do so,” he said. “But this mill construction raises a number of critical questions that need to be addressed.”

Indonesia (AP)

12.1.2016

NGO Letter: Peatland management of APRIL is not sustainable

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A group of NGO sent a letter to the Indonesian paper giant Asia Pacific Resources Limited (APRIL) on peat management in the Kampar Peninsula. APRIL recently announced a peatland restoration project. However, at the same time, the cmpany is continuing to drain peatlands in the same region, for pulp plantations. The letter reminders to APRIL that science show their peat management system is not avoiding peat draining, with all the consequences of this (CO2 emissions, forest fires, soil subsidizing etc), and that industrial plantations on the peatlands of Kampar Peninsula are environmentally and economically unsustainable and irresponsible. The letter asks APRIL to abandon acacia plantations on peat and develop the use of alternative crops that require no drainage, and manage peatlands in an environmentally and socially way.
The letter is signed by Environmental Paper Network, Wetlands International, World Wildlife Fund, Rainforest Action Network, Canopy, JMGR, Walhi Riau, Scale-up and Yayasan Mitra Insani.