Greenwash: Ryman's carbon-neutral claims are paper thin

Industry insiders acknowledge that the stationer's claims about carbon-neutral paper are complex at best

Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 August 2009 10.33 BST
A beaming, clean-cut family with curly haired son sitting on dad's shoulders stares wistfully into the distance from the middle of a corn field. "An initiative for the future," reads the uplifting message on the packaging.
"All carbon emissions generated throughout the production and transportation of Report Carbon Neutral [office paper] to Europe are offset with the restoration of the Atlantic coastal rainforest."
This is Britain's first "carbon neutral" office paper from high-street stationers Ryman. The Report Carbon Neutral brand won top prize at the Stationery and Office Products awards in April.
Ryman's paper sounds green enough. The shop buys from a British paper marketer called A1 Paper that in turns buys from Brazilian paper giant Suzano. The paper hasn't been recycled, but the trees it is made from are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which was set up 15 years ago to recognise wood and paper produced without trashing forests.
Ryman says carbon emissions from manufacture and shipping the paper from Brazil are offset by planting trees in Brazil. And it boasts of an "independent" carbon audit to prove everything is above board. The company is promoting the paper as part of a strategy to turn its 240 UK stores carbon neutral by next March.
But. There must be a but. Industry insiders acknowledge that claims about carbon-neutral paper are complex at best and environmentalists in Australia and the US have recently debunked the whole idea.
The certified forests where the paper originates turn out to be rather controversial. Suzano, one of the world's ten largest paper and pulp companies, makes the paper from its 300,000 hectares of monoculture eucalyptus plantations, many of them in Piaui on the edge of Amazon, and Bahia on land that once formed part of the threatened Atlantic coastal rainforest.
Yes, most of those production forests are FSC-certified. But Brazilian green groups like the Piaui Environment Network and the Alerts Against the Green Desert Network claim the huge plantations trash the land, pollute rivers and displace poor peasant farmers from the land. They are "absolutely against the mission and meaning of the FSC," they said in a letter to the FSC in 2006, also signed by Christian Aid in Britain. By certifying the eucalyptus plantations the FSC "greenwashes a social and environmental tragedy", according to the Alerts Against the Green Desert Network.
The FSC's Alison Kriscenski agrees that certifying big plantations is controversial. "It divides our members, but the consensus is that plantations are essential to supplying demand for paper, so we want to have a positive impact by applying rules for granting certification." Suzano's plantations were certified by a local non-profit organisation called Imaflora. But she agreed there is no thorough research yet into whether certification had improved things in Brazil.
The FSC looks bedevilled by conflicts of interest. Last year's FSC Global Paper Forum was sponsored by none other than Suzano. Months later, the environment group Rainforest Alliance, one of the founders of the FSC, gave Suzano an award at a gala dinner for its social and environmental responsibility. Kriscenski insisted that the FSC has rules to make sure that its relationships with sponsors are not corrupting.
But she also pointed out that "FSC certification is not a guarantee that a forest is carbon neutral, and people should not use it to claim that." Odd that. Suzano, a major sponsor of the organisation, seems to be making precisely that claim when selling its "carbon neutral" paper from FSC forests. Although a close reading shows it restricts the claim to "production and transportation".
What about the other claim: that emissions from the paper's manufacture and transport are all offset? According to Paul Edwards at Sun Paper and Board, Suzano's UK subsidiary, the offsets do not include emissions from transportation or warehousing after the paper arrives at British docks.
And even the Brazil end is questionable. Ryman say its "independent audit" is done by "the Green Initiative" or Iniciativa Verde. What it doesn't mention is that this is the same organisation that has the contract with Suzano to plant the trees that offset the company's emissions. It can't be independent, then. Edwards says the Green Initiative is a non-profit body, but even so, this is still a business arrangement.
The Green Initiative is offsetting the carbon emissions by planting native trees (6.1 trees per tonne of Report Carbon Neutral paper) "on degraded riparian land" in Sao Paulo state. Good. But it only promises to maintain the site for two years. Even though the trees will take an estimated 37 years to absorb the promised amount of carbon.
What happens after the Green Initiative walks away? Edwards says the trees are on land protected by state law, but Brazil's forests are notoriously lawless. It is hard to be confident that the trees will stay in place long enough to soak up the CO2 and make Ryman's paper carbon neutral.
Perhaps I am being over-critical about a well-intended green initiative by a company big enough to make a real difference. Perhaps all those Brazilian NGOs are too. And Christian Aid. But we do have to hold people to account for their claims. Especially when, back on the high streets of Britain, Ryman is charging 80p more for this stuff than for its ordinary office paper.
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