RELATED Tigers Campaign Forests for the World Campaign

<< Back to homepage

Washington, DC : GLOBAL retail giant Wal-Mart is selling products made from illegally logged timber – in turn threatening the habitat of the highly endangered Siberian tiger, new EIA evidence has found.

The report and undercover video evidence show that the company which owns Asda in the UK, is turning a blind eye to destructive illegal logging.

This new evidence comes as Wal-Mart continues to publicly tout its “Sustainability 360” initiative, which asserts the importance of “first and foremost” avoiding illegally harvested wood.

Highlights of the EIA report show that Wal-Mart’s “no questions asked” sourcing policy, which prizes low-price above all, is having particularly dangerous consequences for the high conservation value forests of the Russian Far East, and in turn the world’s largest cat, the Siberian tiger, of which only 500 are thought to remain in the wild.

"High risk"

EIA’s investigators found Wal-Mart’s footprints around the globe, but nowhere more so than in China, which ranks Wal-Mart as its eighth-largest trading partner – and which produces 84% of Wal-Mart’s wood products. China’s manufacturing sector relies on large quantities of high-risk timber imported from the world’s illegal logging hotspots –including Russia’s Far East.

“Everybody in Russia from President Vladimir Putin down to local officials has openly acknowledged that much of the wood flowing from Russia to China is illegal,” said Alexander von Bismarck, EIA’s Executive Director.

“But Chinese manufacturers told EIA investigators again and again that Wal-Mart doesn’t ask where the wood comes from, only if it’s cheap – disputing Wal-Mart’s claims that it avoids sourcing illegally logged wood.”

The EIA undercover team traveled to the Chinese factories and spoke with staff there to investigate Wal-Mart’s business practices. The findings include evidence of 200,000 baby cribs made from high-risk Russian wood by Chinese manufacturers for Wal-Mart.

Baby deaths

Investigators tracked the wood supply back to the Russian forest and found the Russian company logging in tiger habitat and making illegal cash payments to Russian police to move their timber. These were the same cribs recalled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission due to baby deaths. The cribs now continue to be sold in the U.S. with revised assembly instructions.

“Cutting costs should not be an excuse for damaging the environment by accepting illegal wood or threatening endangered species--especially not for the biggest company in the world,” said von Bismarck.

“EIA is calling on Wal-Mart to stand by its CEO’s goal to sell ’products that sustain our natural resources and the environment’, and to remove illegally sourced wood from its supply chain,” added von Bismarck.

ENDS

To read & download the full report click:
here

For more information on EIA US go to www.eia-global.org

< Back