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score of Greenpeace activists, some wearing Sumatran tiger costumes, appeared at a KFC outlet on Jl. Pandanaran, Semarang, Central Java, and called on its customers to urge the fast-food restaurant to stop using paper to serve food as it destroyed natural forests.

The protesters also called on KFC and other fast-food restaurants to stop using the products of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), arguing that the company had been using woods from ramin habitats that had been declared protected by the international community.

Greenpeace said in its reports in March 2012 that APP’s main pulp mill in Sumatra regularly mixed illegal ramin logs with other rainforest species in its pulpwood supply. APP, however, denies this accusation.

“They have to replace [the paper] with better packaging and stop turning the forests into garbage,” Greenpeace campaigner and researcher Iqbal Agus Saputra said on the sidelines of the protest.

Greenpeace’s newest annual report, entitled “How KFC is junking the jungle by driving rainforest destruction in Indonesia”, revealed how a number of fast-food companies like KFC were involved in deforestation in the country.

A forensic study on KFC packaging in China, Great Britain and Indonesia showed a content of wood fibers from Indonesian natural forests, Iqbal said.

There are 14,000 KFC outlets worldwide, 400 of them are in Indonesia. Greenpeace say KFC’s packaging also contributes to the shrinking habitat of the Sumatran tiger. Currently, only some 400 of the endangered animals are reportedly in existence.

“The disposable packaging is
just incomparable with the extinction of protected rare animals like Sumatran tigers as well as of ra-
min habitats and peatland areas,” Iqbal said.

Separately, KFC Pandanaran assistant manager Agus Jurianto said that he had no idea that the packaging used by his company had allegedly resulted in the damage of the environment.

A KFC customer, Sekarsari, expressed the same view, saying that she did not know of the forest damage caused by the packaging of her favorite meals and beverages. She also expressed hope the company would take the right measures to deal with its alleged damage to forests.

“KFC tastes nice. I like it. Yet, it would be better off if the company replaced the packaging,” she said.