Council’s ethical stand vindicated

By Mara Pattison-Sowden
ENVIRONMENT groups believe Yarra Ranges Council has been
vindicated for its decision to join the Ethical Paper Pledge following news that the Reflex paper brand could lose its international certification within months.
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification on the Reflex brand expires after five years at the end of July, and to obtain certification Australian Paper needs to reach an agreement with stakeholders, including councils and environmental groups, over its wood supplies.
It must look at the high conservation values and risks of wood sourced from native forests and decide whether it would need to switch to more expensive plantation timber, which environment groups say is only a matter of time.
The risk of Australian Paper losing its international certification leaves Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh red-faced, after his recent decision to remove forestry jobs from Yarra Glen as long as the council stands by its boycott of Reflex paper.
It also threatens VicForests, one of Australian Paper’s suppliers of native forest woodchips.
The Wilderness Society began the Ethical Paper Pledge after it believed Australian Paper hadn’t engaged with stakeholders on the previous re-certification of the brand.
FSC Australia chief executive Michael Spencer said stakeholders had been concerned with non-FSC certified material within the “mixed sources”
labelled product.
“One requirement is to exclude material from forests where forest management activities endanger high conservation values,” he said.
“In identifying those values and risks, companies need to involve all their stakeholders in that discussion.”
Mr Spencer said Australian Paper would need to demonstrate its commitment to the auditors or face its certification lapsing by 27 July.
Healesville-based My Environment director Sarah Rees said the environment groups were an important part of the process to feed in their concerns about the risks to the native forest, before independent auditors made a determination.
“Since 2009 they called us all in to give our opinion then nothing was heard, and by 2010 they were re-certified,” she said.
“Australian Paper had failed to engage and we recognised it was probably the auditors not the company.”
Ms Rees said Australian Paper had been making regular contact with her over the last week to begin talks.
“We’ve been working with Australian Paper for five years, but they’ve ignored us for so long that that’s where the Ethical Paper Pledge came about,” she said.
“We want to resolve the last 16 months before we’re ready to talk about what’s required for the next 12.”
Australian Paper’s corporate and social responsibility general manager Shaun Scallan said they were ready to engage in the short and longer term with all their stakeholders to work through the FSC process.
“We want to try to get our suppliers to continually improve and we’ve seen some evidence they have,” he said.
“AP has been using plantation wood for over 50 years and is currently investigating the possibilities to expand its use of plantation wood.”
He said the company was preparing a plan for wood security covering the next 25 years.
VicForests spokesman David Walsh said the logging company “supports Australian Paper’s work to achieve certification to a range of industry standards – including its efforts to maintain FSC certification”.