ENVIRONMENT

Australia’s largest supermarket chain, Woolworths, is marketing some of its tissue and paper products as environmentally responsible even though the paper is imported from Indonesia, a country with one of the world's worst records for illegal and unsustainable logging. It also appears to be sourcing at least some of the paper from Asia Pulp and Paper, an Indonesian company with what green groups have described as an appalling environment and human rights reputation.

Woolworths is using a "Sustainable Forest Fibre" logo on its premium home brand "Select" range of tissue and paper products, and claims they are "from a certified environmentally managed company that is environmentally, socially and economically responsible."

However, timber industry and environment organisations contacted by the Herald had never heard of "Sustainable Forest Fibre." The paper producers are clearly marked as Indonesian, but the supplier is not named. However, the "Select" packs of six tissues are embossed with "APP." Asia Pulp and Paper, one of the world's biggest pulp and paper companies, has engaged in illegal logging in Indonesia and destroyed a large area of the nation's rainforests, said a Greens member of the NSW Parliament, John Kaye.

"As long as Woolworths refuses to name their suppliers, assertions of environmental or social responsibility are meaningless. It is impossible to verify them and consumers should treat such claims as greenwash and spin," Dr Kaye said. "The claims on the label that "Select" brand paper products come from an 'environmentally [and] socially responsible' company are contradicted by APP's appalling environmental track record."

Woolworths managers did not return the Herald's calls yesterday but provided a brief email response that said the "Select" range of paper products was sourced from a supplier that had "a documented sustainability action plan and full chain of custody documentation for all pulp and waste material used in their manufacturing sites." "Our own Woolworths Quality Assurance program independently verifies the authenticity of all documentation during an annual audit process," it said.

Zhengxin, China - Behind the walled farmhouses, where fields of cotton and fennel bask in bright sunshine, the desert begins. Pale ochre sand dunes loom over rows of carefully tended crops that represent a lifetime of labor for the 21 families who live here.

As the desert closes in, this community has been told to leave, so that their fields can be replanted with native grass. Local authorities say this will revive the parched land and halt the sand dunes, and have promised new land and housing to villagers. The forced move is an admission that China's grandiose plans to turn its arid land into farms have run dry.

In recent years, China has met some success in slowing the sands by imposing curbs on grazing in Inner Mongolia and other measures. But with China's average annual land loss of about 950 square miles to desertification, according to researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in addition to vast swaths of land turned over to industry and housing, the amount of farmland available to feed a large population is being pinched. In all, more than 10,500 residents of Minqin County in northwest Gansu Province, along the ancient Silk Road, are due to be relocated over the next three years.

It's a tactical retreat after decades of cropping that exhausted scarce water resources. What matters now, say experts, is preventing this and other marginal land from turning into vast dust bowls where nothing grows. "Minqin is an example of what's happening all over China. If we lose villages here, we can expect to lose villages in other places," says Sun Qingwei, a researcher on desertification at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Lanzhou, the provincial capital. For decades, China has been trying to hold back the deserts that cover one-third of the country and produce seasonal sandstorms that scour Beijing and other northern cities. Experts say deforestation and overfarming are to blame for desertification, though global warming may become a greater factor in the future, as the Tibetan glaciers that feed China's waterways are melting.

China has more than 20 percent of the world's population and only 7 percent of its arable land. China announced Monday that rising food prices pushed the inflation rate in July to 5.6 percent, a 10-year high. Adding to the pressure on farmland is rampant environmental degradation that has poisoned waterways and soil. To combat the encroaching Tengger and Badain Jaran deserts, China has planted billions of trees – to replace felled forests and as barriers against the sand. This isn't a panacea, though, say experts, as thirsty trees can exacerbate the problem by sucking up groundwater.

"Planting trees is one way, but it's not that simple. It doesn't tackle the fundamental issue of water resources,” says Wu Bo, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Forestry in Beijing. "We need to calculate how much water the trees will absorb, or else it could have a negative impact." Villagers in Zhengxin have taken on this challenge, with limited success. When the irrigation channels began to run dry, Lu Xianglin switched from wheat to cotton and fennel on his 12 acres. He also planted trees to protect his fields from sandstorms. He says he still gets good yields using flood irrigation and earns a decent income for his family of six, who live in a walled courtyard house.

Other farmers haven't stuck it out: About 1 in 3 have left Zhengxin in the past 10 years after their wheat crops wilted. Young people who can find jobs in the towns rarely return. Last week, Mr. Lu joined the other men in his village on a government-arranged trip to see the land that has been set aside for their relocation, nearly 40 miles to the south. The next day, he was back pruning his cotton fields, shaking his head at the plan. The prospect of uprooting his family troubles him, as does the idea of abandoning the land that fed his forefathers. He prefers to stay and keep up the fight. "With enough water, this problem can be solved," Lu says. "We can plant trees and grass, and they will grow bigger. That will stop the desert."

Experts say that farmers in Zhengxin could switch to drip irrigation to lessen their water intake for growing crops, but warn that it may be too late to reverse the soil erosion. Elsewhere in the region, farmers have erected brick greenhouses this year as part of a plan to grow vegetables using less water. Roadside signs above the windswept plains urge farmers to "Save Water, Protect the Environment."

A legacy of flawed past policies

Elderly residents remember when there was plenty to go around. Hongyashan reservoir, which was built in the 1950s under Mao Zedong's ill-fated "Great Leap Forward" campaign, fed the frontier fields of Minqin, spurring dreams of bumper grain harvests. It was a testament to Mao's dogged belief that man must "use natural science to understand, conquer, and change nature." But decades of unchecked development, including new upstream cropland, depleted the reservoir, so farmers began sinking wells that sapped the water table and left the soil contaminated with salt. Recent wells go nearly 1,000 feet deep in arid areas.

Abdala and her family live right in front of what used to be the dump, and they recall when Martínez arrived some six years ago. "Irania went to work on the land, spending her own salary, with the help of three neighbours who worked for free, and our own humble support," she said. "All the woodlands you see now used to be a rubbish heap, full of black smoke, stench and flies," said Abdala, who also noted that "many of the local residents found work at CEPRU."

Barrio Isleta, with over 500 residents, went through a parallel process of change along with the transformation of the old rubbish dump, thanks to seedlings from Martínez's trees growing in many a local patio, and the organic compost that nourishes their home- grown gardens. Martínez was sent to barrio Isleta as head of the Agriculture Ministry's urban agriculture movement. She has been the head of CEPRU since its foundation, and acknowledges she is "self-taught" and has a "strong character."

"We started this on our own. Everybody said I was crazy, and some people were against the project. But I'm no weakling, and when I'm sure about something I go ahead and do it, mainly out of intuition and love of nature," she said. Now she hopes to resume her studies in agronomy, which she abandoned in the 1990s.

About that time, the dump was formed and spread over an area of six or seven hectares. More than half of it has already been recovered, with a forest containing some 3,000 trees, nurseries for seedlings to continue reforesting, and places for processing wastes or preparing organic fertiliser. There is a workforce of 35, nine of whom are women. "I've got six waste processing areas, but we can only operate three of them with the personnel we have. We need more workers," Martínez said.

In CEPRU, nothing is wasted. Everything is put to some use. An average of 150 to 160 cubic metres of urban waste arrives every day from the barrios on the outskirts of Guantánamo. The first job is to separate organic waste from inorganic materials. The inorganic waste is classified by lots, such as X-ray film, shoe soles, perfume or nail polish containers, toothpaste tubes, cardboard, paper, tin-plate, car tires, radios, TV sets and a great deal of plastic waste.

"We sell off as much as we can as recycled raw materials. Other stuff we use ourselves, for fencing or signs. Tires, for instance, can be used to make thousands of different things, even roofing tiles. A sensible use must be found for every kind of waste," Martínez said. Further income is derived from the sale of organic compost, but the price is five or six times lower than the real cost of production.

"CEPRU will only be sustainable once an environmental economic study has been carried out. Our work is being recognised, but no one has sat down to do the sums," she said. The project has had a striking impact: burning of rubbish is now minimal, proliferation of insect vectors harmful to human health has been curbed, forest species populations have begun to recover, and degraded ecosystems are being protected and rebuilt.

CEPRU receives an estimated one ton a month of high- and low-density plastic waste. Instead of being burned, as it used to be, it is re-utilised in various ways. Experts say this practice has eliminated the release of toxic gases. The reduction represents a six percent drop in the province's total emissions of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like dioxins and furans into the atmosphere.

CEPRU is one of the foremost projects supported by the Global Environment Facility's Small Grants Programme (GEF/SGP), managed in Cuba by the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP). According to SGP estimates and other investigations, the project successfully reforested three hectares of land and grew some 1,000 seedlings a year. Forty households in the community participated in the reforestation effort.

Waste decomposition time was halved, production of organic compost increased by 60 tons, and the uncontrolled burning of 150 tons of rubbish a month was eliminated. At least five new jobs for women were created. Working conditions were improved for the entire staff, who were given training courses which also benefited 50 percent of the residents of barrio Isleta.

London - It was watching sea creatures choke on plastic bags in the Pacific Ocean that finally persuaded Rebecca Hosking that enough was enough. The British filmmaker had already recoiled in disgust at deserted Hawaiian beaches piled up with four feet of rubbish, the jetsam of Western consumerism washed up by an ocean teeming with plastic.

Now, filming off the coast, she looked on aghast as sea turtles eagerly mistook bobbing translucent shapes in the water for jellyfish. "Sea turtles can't read Wal-mart or Tesco signs on plastic bags," fumes Ms. Hosking, who returned to Britain in March. "They will home in on it and feed on it. Dolphins mistake them for seaweed and quite often they'll eat them and it causes huge damage."

Within a few weeks of coming back, Hosking persuaded her hometown to ban plastic bags outright and found herself in the vanguard of a sudden British revulsion for that most disposable convenience of the throwaway society. Stores, grass-roots groups, and citizens are joining forces to reduce national consumption of plastic bags, and Hosking is fielding hundreds of requests a day for guidance.

Wave of plastic-bag activism

Dumbstruck by what she'd seen off the Hawaiian coast during her year-long filmmaking trip, Hosking set up a local screening of her film and invited the town's 43 shopkeepers to come see where plastic bags end up. All but seven of them showed up. At the end of the viewing, held in a local hall, Hosking called for a show of hands in support of a voluntary ban on plastic bags. Every single hand went up. The rest of the town's shopkeepers quickly followed suit. On May 1, Modbury won bragging rights as the first plastic-bag-free town in Europe.

Now, larger towns and even cities are calling up Hosking to ask how she did it. Supermarkets and other retailers are experimenting with plastic-bag-free days, reusable totes, or even buy-your-own bags to discourage usage. Retailer Sainsbury introduced a limited-edition reusable cotton bag with the logo "I am not a plastic bag," emblazoned on it. Priced at $10, within an hour 20,000 of them sold out. Others stores are trying out paper bags and "green" checkout lines for environmentally friendly customers who bring their own bags.

Grass-roots action

Another grass-roots action group, We Are What We Do, was surprised by the strength of feeling on the issue. For a book entitled "Change the world for a fiver" (five British pounds), its activists asked 1 million people what their top suggestions were to make the world a better place. Eschewing plastic bags was one of the most frequent responses, and is now one of its top campaigns. "It's one of the worst indicators of indulgence and excess," says Eugenie Harvey, cofounder of the group, which seeks to inspire people to change the world through everyday actions. "In this country, we [each] use nearly 200 bags a year on average. They can take up to 500 years in landfill to break down. It's needless waste."

Hosking adds, "They are the epitome of throw-away living. It's amazing how many people want to [stop using them], how many towns are keen to get rid of them. We have had 800 e-mails a day." Modbury is even organizing for plastic bags to be recycled into furniture to remove at least some from circulation. Yet an awful lot remain. Estimates vary wildly when it comes to mankind's propensity for the ultimate in convenience shopping. Environmental groups guesstimate that up to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year.

In Britain the figure is 8 billion – 134 per person. Some will be reused or employed as wastebasket liners. But billions end up back in the environment, fluttering from trees and hedges in China, disrupting the digestion of Indian cows, scudding along the ocean floor, and suffocating an estimated 100,000 birds, whales, seals, and turtles each year.

Reduced CO2 emissions

And there is a climate-change dimension as well: Plastic bags are manufactured using oil. Cutting usage in Britain by a quarter would reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 63 tons a year – equivalent to taking 18,000 cars off the road, the government says. Some countries have taken decisive action against the plastic bag. Bangladesh and Taiwan have banned them. Ireland took a much-lauded step of imposing a tax (€0.15 per bag) in 2002, leading to usage reduction of up to 95 percent. Next month, California will become the first US state to force supermarkets to provide recycling bins. But so far, despite the growing public clamor in Britain, the government is showing no signs of introducing a ban or a tax. It prefers encouraging retailers to sign up to waste recycling commitments.

The latest arrangement, agreed in February, commits big stores to reducing the environmental impact of their shopping bags by 25 percent by the end of next year. Government minister Ben Bradshaw called it an "ambitious" agreement and noted that consumers had become "increasingly aware that they can make positive choices to help the environment in the way they shop." But Hannah Chance, spokeswoman for Sainsbury, a big supermarket chain, says a total ban is unlikely at the moment. Sainsbury has tried bag-free days and promoting its reusable "bag for life."

But she says "it would be too radical to completely remove them. The plastic bag does have a functional purpose in life. In cities a lot of people don't have a car. Lots of people use it as a [trash] bag at the end of the day. It's giving customers things that are practical." She said they did try out biodegradable bags, but they weren't strong enough.

Harvey says that Gordon Brown, poised to take over as prime minister next week, once declared that governments "respond to the climate that people create." In other words, as one wag once put it, in order to lead people in Britain, first find out where they're going and then walk in front of them. But it remains to be seen if enough people will move in this direction. Anecdotal evidence would appear to show that those who bring their own bags to supermarkets with them are still in a minority.

Campaigners say they hope that by Christmas it will be "as fashionable to carry plastic as it is to wear fur," but privately admit that they may have a much longer wait.

Plastic statistics – and solutions

500 billion: Number of plastic bags consumed worldwide every year (1 million per minute)
500: Years it takes a plastic bag to decay in landfill.
167: Bags used annually by the average British consumer.
4.175 million: "Average" person's plastic-bag legacy, in years.
£64 to £80 million ($127 million to $159 million): Amount British retailers spend yearly on providing plastic bags to customers.

Countries making headway:

* Since Denmark introduced a packaging tax in 1994, consumption of paper and plastic bags has declined by 66 percent.

* In October 2001, Taiwan introduced a ban on distribution of free single-use plastic bags by government agencies, schools, and the military. In 2003, the ban was extended to include supermarkets, fast-food outlets, and department stores. Customers must now pay NT$1 to NT$2 (30 to 60 cents) for a bag.

* The Irish government says that a tax on plastic bags, introduced in 2002, has cut their use there by more than 95 percent. The "plas tax" has also raised millions of euros, to be used for environmental projects.

* Bangladesh slapped an outright ban on all polythene bags in 2002 after they were found to have been the main culprit during the 1988 and 1998 floods that submerged two-thirds of the country. Discarded bags had choked the country's drainage systems.

* In 2006, Hong Kong began a voluntary drive to reduce plastic-bag use. Since then, supermarkets have handed out 80 million fewer plastic bags.

* The English town of Modbury became the first plastic-bag free town in Europe after all 43 of its independent retailers committed to banning the bag.