John,

Camper vans have become increasingly popular and a symbol for recreation in pristine nature – but the truth is, they are deforested orangutan habitats on wheels.

A breaking report revealed that one rogue logging company has clear cut 40,000 hectares of rainforest in Indonesian Borneo in just 5 years – to harvest a particularly hard-yet-flexible wood called lauan that is then sold to major RV (camper van) makers in the U.S., Australia and Europe.

The deforestation and Indigenous landgrab was so rampant that the government recently issued a stop-work order. But the RV industry has currently no sustainability standards *at all*. We need to act now to stop more rainforest being bulldozed for the Global North's leisure. Let’s call the world’s largest RV makers out so they can’t fly under the radar anymore. Add your name:

Winnebago, Jayco, Forest River: Clean up your tropical wood supply chain immediately.

The latest report from our partners shows: Just one logging company in Indonesia, Mayawana Persada, has cleared tens of thousands of soccer fields worth of carbon-rich peatland and orangutan habitat to make plywood that was shipped abroad to the United States and likely made its way into RVs made by Winnebago, Jayco, and Forest River.

For comparison: Even with a bad case of palm oil deforestation, we’d be talking about 1,000 hectares at best. And while today the palm oil industry has to follow strict sustainability reporting and is under constant scrutiny – thanks to ongoing public pressure for over 2 decades – the RV industry isn’t even fulfilling the lowest level of certification, which is the FSC-standard.

But, together with our partners, if we launch a massive publicity campaign, we could drag RV makers into the spotlight and make them adopt basic sustainability standards immediately. They claim that there’s no alternative (of course there is), and that they’re doing enough (they’re not, e.g. compared to Lowe’s or Home Depot), so let’s call them out for their massive deforestation problem:

Winnebago, Jayco, Forest River: Clean up your tropical wood supply chain immediately - implement the FSC standard now!

When the palm oil industry exploded a little over two decades ago, there were zero sustainability standards – and it devastated Indonesia’s rainforests like nothing else. But tenacious public pressure from workers, consumers, and activists – and people like our Ekō-members – led to strict regulations and reporting so that palm oil deforestation went down over 90% in just 10 years. Let’s make sure the RV industry is being held to account before it’s too late.