Almost one in four Japanese companies could change their paper purchases to help save Australia's old growth forests. This is the finding of a survey of large paper users conducted by the Japan Tropical Forest Action Network (JATAN).
JATAN in Tokyo sent a questionnaire with an informative booklet explaining the state of woodchipping in Australia to 67 Japanese paper consumer companies, and found that 23% of these companies want to stop using paper from Australian old growth forests.
The recipient companies were selected because they are typical of large corporate and industrial paper users.
Replies were received back from 25 companies (37% of total). They included 12 publishers, one printing company, one paper products company, 5 newspaper companies, 3 mail-order business companies and 3 convenience stores.
Regarding their awareness of old growth forests being logging in Australia for export woodchips to make paper in Japan, 6 companies (24% of respondents) replied that they "were aware", but more than half, 13 companies (52%) replied that they "were not aware" of the situation. JATAN believes the questionnaire has been instrumental in raising awareness of the facts to these companies.
Upon questioning their future use of paper from old growth forests, 5 companies (23% of respondents) replied that they will "stop". Considering that 8 companies said they will "look into the matter" and that 6 companies gave no reply, more companies can be expected to possibly take the same measure in the future.
Upon questioning their future plans, 15 companies (60% of respondents) replied that they will "use a higher rate of recycled paper", and 7 companies (28%) replied that they will "use paper from plantation wood". Of these 7 companies, 6 companies have already established their own plantation projects. Apart from the 6 companies which have their own plantations, there was only one company which plans to use plantation wood in the future. In this respect, it shows that the companies' awareness concerning utilisation of plantation wood is still low.
In its booklet, JATAN showed that plantation wood supply is rapidly increasing in Australia, and that there will be enough plantation wood ready for use in near future. In order to stop native forest logging, it would be an effective way for Japanese companies to use existing plantation wood, not only from their own plantations.
Using this recent questionnaire, JATAN was not only able to inform major companies in Japan regarding the issue of woodchipping in Australia, but also found out that 23% of companies will change their practices. However, to alleviate logging pressure on old growth forests in countries such as Australia, it is necessary to persuade more companies to take similar measures.