Day 292 - 01 Nov 96 - Page 10
1 claimed that McDonald's have a consciousness of
2 environmental considerations and referred to the company's
3 environmental task force. I cannot remember the date that
4 was set up. I will come that to that in my notes.
5 Sometime in the early '80s. And a corporate environmental
6 policy. He stated that he did not know when the policy was
7 published but had seen it, quote, on a wall at the head
8 office. He then said that the policy, quote, had not had
9 direct effect on the purchasing department but, quote, it
10 certainly did on the communications department, i.e. the PR
11 department.
12
13 Coming from their senior vice-president in charge of
14 purchasing, we would say that is an admission that their
15 policies are for propaganda purposes rather than any
16 substantial impact on the way they carry out their
17 business. He denied that of course.
18
19 But one example, which I will go into in detail, of course
20 is the complete failure to carry out any customer
21 recycling, and in fact in America it is only 10 stores out
22 of 10,000 at the moment, we heard, I think, from Robert
23 Beavers, but I will come on to that. In the UK, despite
24 having a pilot exercise since about 1989 for about three
25 years ----
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: When you say 'customer recycling', that is
28 the same as -----
29
30 MR. MORRIS: Post customer waste, which is what people
31 understand as recycling.
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can you just remind me on that? You are
34 going to, are you? Because I will tell you what I have in
35 mind. It seems to me there are three possible stages:
36 What ends up on the factory floor in, for instance, the
37 making of cardboard boxes; what McDonald's would use, or
38 might keep itself or their distributors might, i.e. the
39 containers which take stuff to the stores; and then what is
40 left after the customer has eaten his Big Mac. Yes?
41
42 MR. MORRIS: In fact you pondered on the subject yourself at
43 some point and I did make a note so I will be coming to
44 that.
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. Very well.
47
48 MR. MORRIS: Just checking. I cannot find it for the moment.
49 But not only have McDonald's failed to make any attempt to
50 organise customer recycling, they have had a pilot scheme
51 first in Usk and then in Manchester, which they have
52 trumpeted far and wide, and as they have done in this case
53 as well, and I will come to references on that, when in
54 fact nothing was being recycled at all by the company, just
55 by the customers, certainly in terms of the Nottingham one,
56 although the Manchester one at a later date, which is after
57 the alleged libel, may or may not have resulted in some
58 attempt by the company to recycle.
59
60 And we believe, although the evidence may not have been
