Day 293 - 04 Nov 96 - Page 22
1 recycling content dramatically, it is still effectively
2 only a very small percentage, in terms of post-customer,
3 post-consumer content.
4
5 There are just a couple of things I wanted from
6 Robert Langert's statement. In paragraph 14, towards the
7 end of that paragraph, he noted that converting the
8 sandwich Polystyrene foam containers to paper-based wraps
9 achieved a 90 percent volume reduction, which seems to be
10 far greater than replacing them with cartons, paper
11 cartons. The paper wraps, clearly, are a tenth of the
12 volume, which is significant in terms of landfill.
13
14 Then he goes through various countries, and finishes up
15 showing how, for example, in Holland, on 15A of his
16 statement, his first statement, he talks about how the
17 workers at McDonald's help with doing recycling in Holland;
18 and, apparently, there is some kind of recycling going on
19 in Japan. That is point E. Then he mentions -- I did not
20 ask him about this, unfortunately -- the New Zealand
21 Over-the-counter Waste Separation Programme (which we
22 brought in a press cutting of), saying how that had been
23 abandoned after being exposed as being a fraud, that they
24 were dumping all the material, not recycling it. I don't
25 think we had that information until he left the witness
26 box.
27
28 Just a few more quotes on the USA, and then I will be
29 finished with that. It will really just be the forest
30 cover issue for this afternoon and anything else which
31 I may have missed out.
32
33 Persico does not supply Canada, Japan, or Australia, or did
34 not when the evidence was being given. I can't remember
35 exactly what day that came out, but I am sure McDonald's
36 will accept that. They are all very substantial McDonald's
37 countries. I think Japan has over 1,000 McDonald's stores;
38 and, obviously, Canada and Australia, as well, are
39 substantial.
40
41 So, that is one thing that goes towards the -- when we are
42 going to consider the forest cover area, that whole
43 countries are not taken into consideration in the
44 calculation that was being made before.
45
46 Robert Langert said that Persico was the supplier for
47 McDonald's packaging in over 60 countries. I don't know if
48 that helps us to identify that there may be other
49 countries, when he gave his evidence, that also were not
50 covered by Persico, but it seems likely. As we have heard,
51 even within countries that are supplied by Persico, there
52 are whole areas that are not covered, for whatever reason.
53
54 Actually, there is something I did not mention with
55 Casper Van Erp, and also Mr. Langert; that they both
56 accepted -- and Mr. Kouchoucos -- all three of them
57 accepted that McDonald's had no policy on the forest
58 sources of paper pulp for their packaging, which obviously
59 does not show any environmental concern.
60
