Fast-food industry destroying forests

in the Southern U.S

by Morgan Erickson-Davis on 28 April 2008

Fast-food industry destroying forests in the Southern U.S.

Fast-food industry destroying forests in the Southern U.S.

Morgan Erickson-Davis, mongabay.com

April 28, 2008

The Southern forests of North America supply 60% of US and 15% of

global paper demands. Deforestation for wood and paper products, along
with urban sprawl, has resulted in a total decline from 356 million acres in
colonial times to 182 million acres today. The South contains more
threatened forest ecosystems than anywhere else in the US. A major
perpetuator of deforestation in the South is the fast food industry. With
nearly 100 paper packaging mills in the South and thousands of restaurants
worldwide, major fast food retailers such as KFC and Taco Bell are leaders in
paper consumption and subsequent waste. The Dogwood Alliance
(dogwoodalliance.org), a nonprofit organization formed to increase awarness
of the importance of Southern forests and the threats their survival, has
launched a new campaign at nofreerefills.org which specifically targets the
paper packaging practices of the fast food industry.

“Southern forests are (among) the most bio-diverse forests in the world”, says
Dogwood Alliance Media Outreach coordinator Lauren Barnett. “These
forests contain high concentrations of rare and endangered species.” The
Southern forests also function as major carbon sinks, regions that are
incredibly important in their ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere
and sequester it in trees and soil. Not only are carbon-gathering trees being
felled to create products which ultimately find their way to landfills where
they decay and release carbon into the atmosphere; “the large-scale
industrial forestry practices that are used to supply the fiber that is turned
into fast food packaging are major contributors of carbon emissions since
bound carbon is exhausted from the soil when forests are cleared and
managed intensively with chemical fertilizers.”

Overall, the
Southeastern US has
the highest number of
endangered
ecosystems in the
country. More than 30
percent of all native
Southeastern plant
communities have
become critically endangered due to habitat loss and degradation. Many
Southern forest communities are now limited to only a small fraction of their
original range, resulting in 25 endangered and 14 critically endangered
communities. Because of this, 18 mammal, 20 bird, 40 reptile, and 54
amphibian species are now classified as imperiled.

Fast food industry giants such as Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, and McDonalds are
some of the largest consumers of paper products in the US. “Every year
millions of pounds of food packaging waste litter our roadways, clog our
landfills and spoil our quality of life. Southern forests, the jewel of the
American landscape, are being destroyed to bring you fried chicken, burgers
and fries, and super-sized convenience in a glut of wrappers, boxes and cups”
says Barnett. For example, Americans use 15 billion disposable hot beverage
cups every year, with projections reaching 23 billion by 2010. To curb this
excess, Barnett suggests that “consumers bring plastic containers from home
when having a meal out and reuse these containers repeatedly.”

Dogwood Alliance is calling on fast food retailers to implement a series of

practices in order to reduce their impact on the environment, such as
reducing packaging materials, employing 100% post-consumer recycled
boxboard, eliminating paper packaging originating from endangered forests
or industrial pine plantations, recycling their own waste in effort to divert it
from landfills, and creating partnerships to improve forest management.
Barnet stresses that “simple choices and creative solutions can reduce the
excess and destruction
while still allowing us to
enjoy the level of
convenience we have
come to expect.”

An example of the impact

of a business
implementing even very
small changes is that of
Starbucks, who recently White Marsh Clearcut, outside of the Green Swamp,
shifted from completely NC. Image courtesy of the Dogwood Alliance.
non-recycled paper to a
10 percent recycled post-consumer cup. This change alone will result in an
annual drop of about 11,000 tons of wood used and 47 million gallons of
water.

When asked what individual consumers can do to help save the Southern
forests, Barnett has a number of suggestions. “(They can visit) our Web
site, nofreerefills.org to educate themselves on our campaign and the facts
concerning fast food packaging. Then ask fast food companies to Save
Southern Forests by helping our effort.” Many small in-home changes can
also help. “Dining in rather than on-the-go also reduces overall packaging
use. When shopping, purchase products that utilize less paper, and buy
recycled paper and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified products.”
The hamburger chain Burger King has been buying animal feed produced
in soy plantations carved out by the burning of tropical forests in Brazil and
Bolivia, according to a new report.

Jaguars, giant anteaters and sloths have all been affected by the disappearance
of around 700,000 hectares (1,729,738 acres) of forest land between 2011 and
2015.

The campaign group Mighty Earth says that evidence gathered from aerial

drones, satellite imaging, supply-chain mapping and field research shows a
systematic pattern of forest-burning.

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Local farmers carried out the forest-burning to grow soybeans for Burger
King’s suppliers Cargill and Bunge, the only two agricultural traders known to
be operating in the area.

Glenn Hurowitz, Mighty Earth’s CEO, said: “The connections are quite clear.
Bunge and Cargill supply Burger King and other big meat sellers with
grain. McDonald’s, Subway and KFC are not perfect but they’re doing a hell of
a lot more to protect the forests. If Burger King does not respond immediately
to people who want to know where their food comes from, then people should
shop elsewhere.”

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The destruction of tropical forest and savannah land highlighted in the report
is concentrated in Bolivia’s lowland forests and in the Brazilian Cerrado, where
the pace of deforestation is now outstripping that of the Amazon.
One of Burger King’s suppliers buys soy from Bunge that originates in the
Brazilian Cerrado, according to commodities data provided by the Stockholm
Environment Institute.

Cargill has also sponsored Burger King’s annual convention in 2015, and
donated a five-figure sum to the Burger King McLamore Foundation in 2014.

Last year, nearly 2m hectares of land was deforested in Brazil – up from 1.5m
in 2015 – while an estimated 865,000 hectares of forest was cleared in Bolivia,
compared to 667,000 a year in the 2000s.

Not all of the forest clearing was linked to soy production, but Mighty Earth
says food companies are not doing enough to prevent deforestation in areas
they operate in, and offer financial incentives that spur the process in the first
place.

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Burger King, which is owned by the Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital, does
not disclose details of its suppliers but has refused to rule out buying products
produced on deforested land.

Sharon Smith, a tropical forests manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists,

said: “Burger King is one of the world’s largest fast food companies, but
consistently ranks last in the industry when it comes to environmental
protection policies. The fast food giant needs to follow its competitors like
McDonald’s and demand that its suppliers are not destroying tropical forests
as part of their business model.”
The fast food giant, which operates at least one joint venture with Cargill,
declined to respond to requests for comment.

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 This aerial shot shows Amazon rain forest, bordered by deforested land prepared for planting
soybeans in Mato Grosso, western Brazil. Photograph: Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

Cargill has also sponsored Burger King’s annual convention in 2015,

and donated a five-figure sum to the Burger King McLamore Foundation in
2014.

In a written statement to the Guardian, Cargill stressed its commitment to

halving incidences of deforestation in its supply chains by 2020 and ending it
by 2030.

Will McDonald's ‘sustainable beef’ burgers really be any better?

 
Read more
A company statement sent to the Guardian said: “In Brazil, we have seen great
progress as we partnered to advance the soy moratorium in the Amazon for
more than a decade. Today, we are working with more than 15,000 soy
farmers and collaborating with governments, NGOs and partners to
implement the Brazilian forest code and advance forest protection.”

Campaigners counter that Cargill has refused to extend the soy moratorium
beyond the Amazon, with its trade association citing the lack of a “crisis
situation”.

Bunge said that the report made a misleading correlation between Bunge’s
presence in the Brazilian Cerrado and total deforestation figures in that
region. “Two facts are important,” it said. “First, most land use change is not
directly related to the crops Bunge buys. According to Global Forest Watch,
soy covers 25% of land cleared since 2011 in the Matopiba region, where recent
deforestation has been most prevalent. Second, our market share for the
municipalities where we operate silos in the region is only 20%.”

More than half of the Cerrado’s natural vegetation has already been cleared,
compared to 25% of the Amazon’s.

Investors representing $617bn of assets on Tuesday sent a letter to Cargill,

Bunge and several burger chains, in which they “demand that companies
reaffirm and extend zero deforestation commitments specific to Latin
America”.

• This article was amended on 2 March 2017 to add a statement from Bunge
received after publication.

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