Reflex Paper – 100% hoodwink
The latest porky to come from the makers of Reflex paper, is that their product is now 100% forest sensitive, in fact it’s so eco-friendly it is bursting with endangered species.
Australia’s biggest paper company, PaperlinX in the Latrobe Valley, is congratulating itself for this bodgie eco-label given by the normally reliable Forest Stewardship Council certification scheme.
Bottom rung tick-off
In fact it has only the lesser FSC ‘Chain of Custody’ Certification for its Reflex paper. To get this tick it needs to have 59% of its woodchips come from properly FSC certified sources, like a well-managed plantation. The other 41% can come from any government approved forest (rainforest, threatened species habitat etc). As long as it’s not ‘illegally taken’.
FSC duped?
So where does the supposed eco-friendly wood come from? Considering that Paperlinx still takes 59% of its pulp from the Central Highlands’ water catchments, old growth and Leadbeaters Possum habitat as well as importing Tasmania’s forests, this claim is very unconvincing. Even the logs they buy from Hancocks’ plantations in South Gippsland are only under interim FSC certification. Hancocks’ interim certification has been reviewed because they breached so many environmental principles. That report is being firmly sat upon.
100% Australian hoodwinkery
We are told this ‘demonstrates the PaperlinX commitment to environmental principles through the entire paper chain’. More like a commitment to keep hoodwinking the public with half truths. And we are reassured that all this is ‘Australian made’! That is – it comes from our very own native forests supporting Aussie native wildlife that are crushed under bulldozers driven by Aussie blokes, daily. Something to be proud of!
EEG and our regional sister group, The Central Highlands Alliance, is currently asking some very tough questions of the certifying body.