Since the ABC and Channel 10 News aired reports about Woolworths supermarkets’ green-washing campaign surrounding the Select toilet paper and tissues, Today Tonight has also stepped up its game and has investigated the issue.
Today Tonight (Seven Network) went to a town in South Australia where the local Woolworths store has boycotted the company’s own Select toilet paper, tissues and paper towel.
The store, in a town called Millicent, has banned the Select paper products saying that if locally produced products aren’t good enough, then nothing is.
This all seems to stem from there being a manufacturing plant in the town, which employs local workers.
What the report doesn’t adequately cover is that manufacturing plants in Australia have to conform to certain environmental practices, where as those in foreign, developing nations, such as APP in Indonesia and China, ignore logging laws and instead massacre forests in old growth, high-conservation areas.
The investigative reporter makes a good point – that if Woolworths continues to source its products from cheaper, questionable sources from overseas, that over 100,000 hectares of pine and gum tree plantations that employ Australian workers, will be wiped out.
All of this will happen while Woolworths continues to fund the carbon-emitting practices of APP, simply by sourcing its toilet paper and tissue from Indonesia and China.
Toilet paper is maybe the most-used item on everyone’s shopping list – so the fact that enormous quantities of it are being sourced from environmentally un-friendly, unsustainable and illegal sources, should be of concern to us all.
The video I got of the report is well-worth a look. I’ve posted it on YouTube and it’s embedded below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLSCR-wI5e8
It’s common knowledge that Select is a huge money-maker for Woolworths. But Michael Luscombe really needs to realise that these dodgy business practices are not acceptable and are un-Australian.
Monday, April 21, 2008
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