Converting Less Rainforest into Toilet Paper Score one for the
strategy of pressuring corporations to act now for environmental
sustainability. Whereas governments often meet, greet, and
retreat on big issues like deforestation, environmentalists have
convinced a major Asian pulp company to stop scalping the
rainforests of Indonesia to produce paper and packaging. You've
got to reserve a healthy skepticism for stories like this. Will
an agreement really hold? But it is indeed significant that Asia
Pulp & Paper has not only promised to halt operations in
Indonesia's natural forests, but has actually begun pulling out
its employees from these areas. To monitor its compliance with
the agreement, the company has hired the European nonprofit
Forest Trust, which reportedly deserves most of the credit for
negotiating the deal. Up to now, the pulp company had derived a
fifth of its Indonesian wood from rainforests. Meanwhile, so
many trees and peat bogs burn in the country that Indonesia
ranks among the world's top e