The world's largest toy company has been accused of using wood from Indonesian rainforests by Greenpeace.
Greenpeace used a combination of ‘in country’ investigation, mapping data and traced company certificates to show that Mattel, the makers of Barbie, along with other toy companies including Disney, are using packaging produced by Asia Pulp and Paper (APP).
APP has been accused of greenwashing, claiming it wanted to source all its wood from sustainable plantations by 2015. However, it has not made clear where the current shortfall in wood supplies would come from in the meantime.
'APP is bad news for Indonesia’s forests. It treats Indonesia as nothing more than a vast disposable asset, grabbing rainforests that are vital to forest communities. Mattel, and other toy companies like Disney, have a responsibility to support clean, low carbon development. They should drop APP right now and instead support responsible Indonesian producers,' says Greenpeace campaigner Bustar Maitar.
Mattel themselves have promised to investigate the claims. But APP themselves say the allegations are 'meaningless'.
An APP spokesperson said: 'Indonesia’s pulpwood land concessions, legally provided by the Government of Indonesia, include some degraded forests, which are required by law to be developed into plantations. Rather than burn the wood residues, increase carbon emissions or create disease outbreaks in the forests, the government requires that they be used to produce paper pulp. Despite this, as publicly stated, we have set the goal of 100 per cent sustainable plantation pulpwood by 2015. There is absolutely no illegal wood tolerated, nor is high conservation forest (HCV) harvested for pulpwood production.'
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