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20th May 2005 Editorial Departments: Economy/Environment deutsche Version... With "Tempo" to poverty Action Day for a better Purchase Practice at Procter&Gamble The multinational group Procter&Gamble, who in this country sell well-known branded products such as 'Tempo'-handkerchiefs and 'Charmin' toilet-paper is using pulp from Eucalyptus monocultures in Brazil, for which the native inhabitants are expelled and the environment is ruined. Today, activists of the environmental organisation ROBIN WOOD protested against this, and demanded an improved purchase practice. In Neuss, at the Procter&Gamble-factory for the handkerchief production, the activists unfolded a banner with the inscription: "Procter&Gamble - Profit with Tempo - Poverty in Brazil". In eight other cities, incl. Berlin at the Brandenburger Gate and the Bremen city, the environmentalists explained the reason to the consumers and distributes small packages with recycled handkerchiefs, on which the word "Poverty" appears instead of the 'Tempo'-logo, however in the same design. Procter&Gamble purchases pulp from Aracruz Celulose, the world-wide largest manufacturer of bleached Eucalyptus-pulp, who cultivates the approx. 250,000-hecatare Eucalyptus plantation in Brazil. In the direct vicinity of the largest pulp factory in the Federal State of Espirito Santo, land-right conflicts with the indigenous population of the Tupinikim and the Guarani are currently escalating. Aracruz refuses to return an area of 11,000 hectares which the Brazilian authorities have already acknowledged as Indian territory. This week, the Tupinikim and the Guarani have begun to mark the area as their property, in order to make visible in public their claim to it. The establishment of the intensively-cultivated monocultures also has fatal consequences for the environment: Where only back in the 1970's, Atlantic costal rainforests were growing, one today finds Eucalyptus plantations. A diverse Fauna and Flora was destroyed and converted into a "green desert". Local residents complain that the fish supplies in the bay, into which Aracruz drains its waste water, have decreased drastically. So far, Procter&Gamble refuses to give ROBIN WOOD any exact information as to where the Group purchases its pulp. Through own investigations as well as a travel to Brazil, ROBIN WOOD has however documented the path of the pulp from the Aracruz factory at Espirito Santo to the Procter&Gamble factory at Neuss. Further, a renowned US-laboratory on behalf of ROBIN WOOD analyzed the pulp composition of the Procter&Gamble products. According to this, the tested "Tempo" handkerchiefs consist to more than 50 p.c. of Eucalyptus pulp. The 'Charmin' toilet-paper contains approx. 60 p.c. Eucalyptus pulp. "The German consumers do not want to be made accomplices of commercial groups who violate land rights and drive humans into poverty", says Peter Gerhardt, who investigated for ROBIN WOOD in Brazil. For ROBIN WOOD, the purchase of Procter&Gamble products is only acceptable, if the Group purchases pulp exclusively from a socially-just and ecologically-sustainable forestry. At present, Aracruz does not comply with these demands. For any queries: Peter Gerhardt, Jens Wieting, ROBIN WOOD-Tropical-Forest Section, ph +49 (0)40 / 380 892 18, tropenwald@robinwood.de Ute Bertrand, ROBIN WOOD-Press Office, ph +49 (0)40 / 380 892 22, presse@robinwood.de A ROBIN WOOD investigation report as well as up-dated photos and information from Brazil: www.robinwood.de/raubbaupapier in Berlin... in Bremen... Tempo factory in Neuss...