Kmart envelopes fail rainforest test
The Age
Paddy Manning
September 26, 2011
LABORATORY testing of Kmart's Indonesian-made Office One home-brand envelopes shows they contain 19 per cent mixed tropical hardwood fibre sourced from rainforest.
The analysis, commissioned from an American lab by environment group Markets for Change, comes amid an increasingly bitter debate about Indonesian forest practices, which has seen Australian retailers, including IGA and Officeworks, stop supplies from manufacturers of paper products including giants Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd and Asia Pulp and Paper.
Kmart's Office One copy paper is made in China but its home-brand envelopes are made in Indonesia, although the manufacturer is not identified on the packaging.
A Kmart spokesperson yesterday was surprised at the findings and said the company would ''take the matter extremely seriously and begin an immediate investigation''. On Friday the secretary-general of Indonesia's Forestry Ministry, Hadi Daryanto, addressed a conference in Sydney organised to counter environmental campaigns against forest industries.