Day 292 - 01 Nov 96 - Page 18


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Yes.
     3
     4   MR. MORRIS:   Mr. Oakley admitted that when the UK McDonald's
     5        introduced CFCs in their packaging in 1986 as blowing
     6        agents they were aware of ozone damage caused by CFCs in
     7        aerosols but was not aware that they could apply to
     8        packaging.  But, as we revealed, in 1987 Friends of the
     9        Earth called for a boycott of McDonald's products over
    10        CFCs, and the next year McDonald's in the UK abandoned the
    11        use of CFCs, although Mr. Oakley denied it was any
    12        consideration but quite remarkably he said he had only
    13        heard about the CFC problem from reading the newspapers,
    14        The Sunday times.
    15
    16        It seemed to very much rely on the chance reading of one
    17        person, Mr. Oakley, at that stage, and I think that is
    18        significant in terms of whether McDonald's had any
    19        environmental considerations if they are relying on
    20        Mr. Oakley reading something in a newspaper and making an
    21        executive decision.  It seems a bit more likely even that
    22        the Friends of the Earth boycott, which he said had not
    23        been a consideration, but as we come to his evidence we
    24        will hear that McDonald's spokespeople had commented to the
    25        press about the Friends of the Earth boycott call, they did
    26        know about it,, and also in the USA, as a result of the
    27        abandonment after protests in the USA of their Polystyrene
    28        packaging, that-----
    29
    30   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Can you remember what that happened?
    31
    32   MR. MORRIS:   Well, I am going to move on to that.  I have not
    33        got the date.  I am going to go through that over the
    34        weekend.  I have the UK situation and the Europe situation
    35        fairly well mapped out.
    36
    37        But McDonald's in the UK had announced that they would be
    38        phasing out their Polystyrene packaging as a result of what
    39        they were doing in the US, which they did not do in the
    40        end.  Meanwhile, in the USA our witness Brian Lippsett, who
    41        is an expert researcher on packaging materials, had been
    42        the researcher behind the campaign which forced the
    43        withdrawal of McDonald's Polystyrene foam food packaging in
    44        the USA.  He identified the problems associated with
    45        Styro-foam, toxic waste, damage to the ozone layer and smog
    46        pollution, and also the leaking of Styrene from the packing
    47        into the foods packaged in the foam, which comes under the
    48        evidence of Dr. Millstone and Ronald Walker, and serious
    49        disposal problems, the sheer volume of the material and the
    50        lack of a suitable method of disposal.
    51
    52        Of course, the point about Polystyrene foam is the volume.
    53        I think we had a figure somewhere, four times the volume
    54        per item ending up in a landfill for equivalent, what they
    55        now have in the US, the paper wrap.  Of course, if they
    56        used packaging and it was biodegradable it would not take
    57        up probably even a tenth of the area.  So the use of
    58        Polystyrene foam is particularly bad in terms of landfill,
    59        not just by weight but by volume.
    60

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