Trading Tigers for Toilet Paper

Indonesia 2011

By Sandra Hausman

June 15, 2011

Also aired on WVTF Public Radio




Greenpeace's campaign against Mattel highlights that company's relationship with Asia Pulp & Paper--one of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world, and a major exporter of Indonesian timber.

Last week, the environmental group Greenpeace stepped up its campaign against rainforest destruction by claiming it had analyzed packaging used by toymaker Mattel and concluded the cardboard was made from tropical rainforest trees.

One of many barges carrying timber out of Indonesia's once-plentiful forests.

The material was supplied by a company that collected a quarter of a million dollars from Virginia taxpayers to expand a subsidiary in their state.

On a fact-finding trip with the International Reporting Project (IRP), WVTF's Sandy Hausman learned more about the situation and filed this report.

Orphaned by traders and weakened by human diseases, this rescued orangutan must learn basic survival tactics such as climbing trees.