Wilderness Society steps up anti-Australian Paper protest

The lobby group said that two "costumed activists" dressed as a koala and a quoll locked themselves to the entrance of the Bondi Junction outlet of the office supplies chain before being "cut off and removed by police".

The green lobby group recently took its protest against Australian Paper to the streets with a "public awareness campaign" at Officeworks chains across the country.

Campaigners have descended on outlets in Sydney over recent weeks, with action also taking place in Melbourne and Newcastle.

The rallies aim to discourage consumers from buying Australian Paper's Reflex brand, which uses wood produced from fibre from native forests.

At the protest at the North Sydney Officeworks, Wilderness Society campaigner Peter Cooper told ProPrint: "We would like to be able to support Australian Paper but they need to stop sourcing from native forests."

Cooper added that the lobby group had informed Australian Paper about an impending "public awareness campaign", but not where and when protests were going to take place.

The Wilderness Society sent a letter to Australian Paper chief executive Jim Henneberry on 17 January to inform him of the group's Ethical Paper Pledge, "in which Australian companies pledge to not purchase any Reflex brand products until Australian paper publicly declares its intention to not source any materials through native logging".

It follows a recent dispute between the green group and the paper company over the use of search terms on Google to promote the Wilderness Society's campaign.

Australian Paper has launched its own website, 'Ethical Paper: The Facts', to give its side of the story. The site points out: "Less than 0.1% of Victoria’s native forests are harvested each year. After harvesting, forested areas are replanted with the same species that naturally occurred on that site."

The website also states: "Almost half of the office paper used in Australia each year is imported from Indonesia, China and Thailand. The majority of this imported paper is made from wood which is not third-party certified for sustainable forest management. Australian-made office paper is a sustainably managed local alternative to imported papers."

The Wilderness Society's campaign is solely about Reflex and not Australian Paper's commercial printing products.