Mercury Paper Policy Position: The Greenpeace Campaign to Kill Virginia Jobs
ShareVirginian’s are being subjected to a misinformation campaign run by radical environmental group Greenpeace.
Greenpeace is demonizing and spreading dishonest information about Mercury Paper, and its parent company, Sinar Mas, who have brought needed investment and jobs to the community of Strasburg, Virginia, USA.
This is a calculated effort to malign Sinar Mas by vested and entrenched interests with little regard to the impact it will have on the hardworking Virginians whom call Mercury Paper home and a job.
The Greenpeace attack comes barely one month after Governor Bob McDonnell cut the ribbon on a $21.2 million expansion ceremony at the Strasburg-based plant. The enlarged facility will become the U.S. headquarters for the company’s paper operations, directly producing 150 new jobs for a region that saw unemployment hit a high of 9.7% earlier this year (1). Those jobs, and additional employment that created through Mercury Paper’s use of the nearby Virginia Inland Port Authority (2), were behind the $250,000 grant issued by the Governor’s Opportunity Fund to assist Shenandoah County with infrastructure, a grant that will pay for itself within six years just from state income tax collections.
So, what is wrong with any of this?
Nothing, unless you are an unrelenting environmental group intent on furthering a peculiar, hidden agenda.
Greenpeace Smear Machine
Greenpeace is an anti-American smear machine and has illegally trespassed and defaced an American monument, Mount Rushmore, a treasonous act that shows contempt and disregard for America.
Greenpeace is working now to smear the Mercury Paper plant, which employs hard working Virginians, with the broadbrush that it is destroying virgin rain forest and natural habitat in developing nations, from which some of the 4,400 pound paper rolls coming into Strasburg are derived.
It’s the kind of claim of defacement that one hears often from Greenpeace, and unfortunately it is one that too many people are ready to accept as true, even lacking much scientific proof.
The plain fact is that there has been no finding that the paper going to the Mercury Paper plant has been produced in violation of any law.
Indeed, under the proposed implementation of the U.S. Lacey Act (3), imports of illegally produced paper are prohibited. Mercury Paper itself has averred that its entire family of products are made from 100% sustainable and renewable fibers. And it notes that its paper suppliers plant more than 1.5 million trees every day to renew the supply chain.
Sinar Mas has sought independent auditing of its pulp and paper operations from Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFCS) and the Indonesian Ecolabeling Institute (LEI).
This is part of their longstanding goal of ending commercial forestry, and to advance its political agenda that puts at risk economic growth and development, sustainable forest management and job and wealth creation in places like Indonesia, and right here at home in Virginia.
The Good News for Virginia
The best thing that Virginians can do for their environment and their economy is to ignore Greenpeace. Instead, they should listen to what Casey Krim, the laid off single mother of two who had been surviving on unemployment, told her youngsters, after she got a call back from the Mercury Paper plant following a job interview:
“I told them Mamma was working, Mamma had a job!"
The Strasburg paper plant’s revitalization comes at a vital moment for the region, as General Electric will be closing its incandescent light bulb plant in September (4) as a result of new federal light efficiency standards, standards environmentalists have demanded and won but will now cost the area 200 jobs.
The Virginia Economic Development Commission hopes the GE facility, with its automated warehouse and access to rail, will attract a new business, even though they can’t market the facility until 2011. In the meantime, Virginians in the Shenandoah region need jobs. Unemployment is higher in the area than the state average, about 70% higher than in the Fairfax and Alexandria areas.
The fact that the Mercury Paper facility will be headquarters for North American operations for the company promises a deeper commitment to the community and region than if it were just another plant.
It will help stabilize employment with a facility that makes appropriate use of the region’s transportation advantages without posing any threat to its natural resources.
Virginia needs the kinds of jobs and opportunity Mercury Paper Inc. will provide. It doesn’t need Greenpeace’s one-eyed smear campaign or anti-growth agenda.
[1] http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/VASHEN1URN
[2] Press release, “Strasburg New Home for Paper Plant,” The Virginia Economic Development Partnership, April 4, 2010, http://7bends.com/2010/04/04/strasburg-mercury-paper-expansion/
[4] Jim Heffernan, “GE Plant Closing Delayed Until Sept.,” nvdaily.com, March 31, 2010. http://www.nvdaily.com/news/2010/03/ge-plant-closing-delayed-until-sept.php
