ProPrint editor Steve Crowe put Aida Greenbury, director of sustainability and stakeholder engagement for APP Indonesia, in the hotseat for an hour, during which she addressed a variety of questions on the company's green credentials.

Asked why APP's relations with the FSC standards body had fractured, Greenbury said that its facilities did in fact pass FSC's requirements, but that new FSC principles were formed in 2007 that were applied to freeze APP out of the process.

She said that the company had endeavoured to find a working solution with the FSC, but was still awaiting a response, and that it had asked that these principles be applied to all paper companies working to the standard.

Greenbury drew a line between the standards and companies of the western hemisphere, and the unique needs and requirements, both environmental and social, of Indonesia.

She said that, although its competitors had converted their plantations many years ago, APP was a relative newcomer to the industry and the process of converting forestry, which was legally granted by the Indonesian government, to production plantations, was very different from simply maintaining existing plantations in a sustainable manner.

Before any such conversion is undertaken, she claimed, third-party research is undertaken to identify areas that have a high conservation value and need to be protected. Pulp produced from these areas have "around 20% mixed wood residues", although Greenbury maintained that APP is legally obliged to take this wood out.

Greenbury added that, as a relative newcomer to the pulp market compared to major players in the western hemisphere, APP had been subjected to a lot of scrutiny - more so than its competitors - and that this "enabled us to learn from their mistakes".

View the full webcast now and see how Greenbury responded to environmental concerns about APP operations and the actions of various NGOs.