Officeworks discontinues selling PaperOne

Aug 26, 2011

Officeworks has taken our concerns serious and decided to discontinue procurement of PaperOne as of August 24th 2011.

Our protest action starting in August 2011 "The rainforest is being clear-cut on Sumatra – for our paper" has a first success: Over 2,000 participants have convinced the biggest Australien retailer for PaperOne, Officeworks, to discontinue procurement of PaperOne as of August 24th 2011. Rettet den Regenwald welcomes Officeworks’ decision.

In their statement (read PDF) they informed us that they "undertook a formal review of the matter with APRIL" and accordingly "decided to suspend procurement of APRIL’s products with immediate effect.".

Producer of PaperOne is Asian pulp and paper, or APRIL, who is destroying large sections of rainforest to create acacia plantations. The company uses the wood from the acacia tree to produce PaperOne brand printer paper for international markets. The habitat of the last Sumatran Tigers and the livelihoods of the small farmers living there are threatened by the plantations.

You can still see the documentary aired on August 2, 2011 on the Australian television network ABC, where renowned biologist Bill Laurance describes the destruction in Riau by APRIL as "some of the worst forest destruction I’ve ever seen anywhere."