Step aside Singapore Environment Council (SEC), Indonesia's largest paper and pulp firm is trying to out-green you.

Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) recently recruited one of the key SEC members in charge of the Singapore Green Label to be part of its Singapore team.

Kavickumar Muruganathan, 27,  joined APP (Singapore) as a Manager (Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement) on April 18.

This comes just a few months after APP recruited former SEC Chief Jose Raymond as its vice-president of corporate affairs in January. Raymond was Singapore Sports Hub's Senior Director (Corporate Communications and Stakeholder Management) before he joined APP.

In a Straits Times interview about his move, Raymond believed that APP was not to blame for the haze and he "would not be on their team" if he ever had a doubt.

Recap: Why is APP engaging in a charm offensive in the first place?

The company first made the news when large supermarket chains NTUC FairPrice, Sheng Siong and Prime Supermarket decided to remove their products from their shelves last October, at the height of the September haze.

They took action after the SEC temporarily suspended APP's exclusive distributor Universal Sovereign Trading's use of their Green Label.

The SEC's move was also highlighted recently by Environment and Water Resources Minister Masagos Zulkifli at the 3rd Singapore Dialogue on Sustainable World Resources on April 15.

Minister Masagos used the SEC's temporary restriction on the use of the Green Label by APP as an example of how civil society can play a critical role in enhancing the transparency and accountability of companies and their supply chains.

That could also be the reason why APP has started to engage its Singaporean stakeholders more actively.

In fact, Raymond embarked on a media blitz, and was interviewed in the various mainstream media — including this extensive interview with 938 Live in February:

It looks pretty clear to us that they're trying to reinstate their Green Label — their ticket to convincing supermarkets to put their products back on their shelves again.

Why are the new hires significant?

Well, the way we see it, hiring two former SEC folks shows us that APP is at least willing to do a bit more to be environmentally-friendly and address the issue of hotspots on their occupied forest land.

It must certainly have been quite a coup for APP to convince Kavickumar to leave SEC and join the "dark side".

In the media release on Kavickumar's new appointment, Raymond noted that "Kavic was Head of the Eco-Certification team in the Singapore Environment Council, where he assessed and administered the Singapore Green Label".

In other words,  Kavickumar was the head of the Green Label team in SEC.

Raymond added that Kavickumar's "appointment to APP (Singapore) further reflects (their) commitment to Singapore and our regional markets".

After all, Kavickumar was one of the finalists for the Straits Times Singaporean of the Year award last year for his lobbying efforts to pull APP's products from the shelves of major retailers, among other alleged haze culprits.

One cannot help but notice the irony of the whole situation: Kavickumar made his name from punishing APP. He is now on the other side trying to convince his former colleagues that APP has repented.

Anyway, let's hope APP's SEC-inspired co-option recruitment policy will help create positive and lasting change in a company that was perceived rightly or wrongly as one of the villains of last year's haze.

Related article:

Here are some products manufactured by Asia Pulp and Paper Company that you can find in Singapore

Top photo: Composite from Jose Raymond's and Kavickumar's Facebook pages. APP logo from website.

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