Day 293 - 04 Nov 96 - Page 11


     
     1        academic because we are talking about pre-1990, so...
     2
     3        Finally, in this kind of European area, there was a
     4        document which was minutes of the McDonald's Development
     5        Corporation, McDonald's Europe, and again I could not find
     6        the reference to this.  Perhaps Mrs. Brinley-Codd can
     7        help.  (Pause) I think it was a document that came after we
     8        asked Mr. Van Erp about pre-1991 documentation which he had
     9        seen, or something, and then it was disclosed later.  It
    10        was dated... It looks like this.  If that is any help.
    11
    12   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   What is the date?
    13
    14   MR. MORRIS:   On it, it is dated 21 January, 1991.  On the
    15        actual memo, itself.  It was a meeting, waste versus
    16        disposables meeting, which had representatives of all four
    17        countries facing this issue, which was Germany, Switzerland
    18        and Sweden, and Holland, which were apparently under
    19        legislative pressure, McDonald's were under legislative
    20        pressure, for environmental reasons to end their disposable
    21        packaging.
    22
    23   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   You said waste versus disposables.  Did you
    24        mean reusable?
    25
    26   MR. MORRIS:   It is dull - actually says 'waste versus
    27        disposables meeting'.  I don't know why it was called
    28        that.  So there were also people from McDonald's UK,
    29        McDonald's Development Company, Persico, and the public
    30        relations people, Wellbeck, Gold and Harris, at the meeting
    31        and the general drift of it, and it did come up in - I
    32        can't remember where - it came in cross-examination, about
    33        how this was like an organised meeting to launch a kind of
    34        PR reaction to the legislative and environmental concerns
    35        about McDonald's packaging waste.  And there were some
    36        quite revealing comments in it where, for example, on page
    37        2 of that document, Mike Matthews and Corine Reed at that
    38        meeting indicated that solid waste is not yet a key concern
    39        in the UK and the implications of this....  I will not go
    40        into it, but McDonald's reacts because of public pressure
    41        or statutory pressure, but that it is important for them to
    42        be seen to preempt that and to take the moral high ground
    43        once they feel it is going to be an issue, which is again a
    44        kind of double criticism of their approach.
    45
    46        For example, in the second paragraph on that page it says:
    47        The recycling programme, "ideas such as Clarges (?) which
    48        is a recycling programme are worth investigating in that
    49        waste packaging concerns will soon arise in the UK as
    50        well."   So it is worth investigating it because they are 
    51        going to be facing some public pressure, not because it is 
    52        a good thing in itself. 
    53
    54        Then there are various references in the next paragraph on
    55        page 2 about very important to have marketing PR people
    56        involved in these issues.  I will just skip through.
    57        (Pause).
    58
    59   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   If you do track down where I find that.... I
    60        mean, it may be obvious.  If I look, I may find it is

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