Day 056 - 28 Nov 94 - Page 51


     
     1        products will be made from virgin fibre of the kind we have
     2        been describing because, for health and food contact
     3        reasons, it should be made that way, as I believe it has
     4        been said in this court, sir, McDonald's have insisted on a
     5        high percentage of recycled fibre in the packaging
     6        materials they purchase; I have been told at one time that
     7        it was 72 per cent and if that is the case, then our
     8        discussion becomes almost impossible to define.  Parameters
     9        are from one end of the scale of recycled 100 per cent to
    10        entire virgin fibre which we have been talking about of
    11        this nature.
    12
    13   Q.   Just pause there a moment.  Are the figures you have put in
    14        your statement for McDonald's on the basis that all the
    15        packaging, be it paper bags or cardboard boxes, which
    16        McDonald's use is coming from fresh timber, if I can put it
    17        that way, without taking account, in other words, of the
    18        proportions which are recycled paper?
    19        A.  Again there is a problem in this, because recycling has
    20        different connotations.  If one is using recycling in terms
    21        of waste material, calculations are used where sawmill
    22        residues and fibre for that purpose are included.
    23
    24   Q.   Post-consumer recycled?
    25        A.  Consumer recycled, this does not refer to consumer;
    26        this calculation does not refer to consumer recycled at
    27        all, because what we are talking about here is the amount
    28        of timber needed and the forest area to provoid that timber
    29        which will make a given volume of paper and value without
    30        taking recycling into account.
    31
    32   MR. MORRIS:  Yes, but the figures you were given by McDonald's,
    33        if you look on page 6 at the top, had excluded the alleged
    34        recycled material content.
    35
    36   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    37
    38   THE WITNESS:  As it was presented to me I took that tonnage and
    39        produced it in terms of excluding recycled material.
    40
    41   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just pause there again.  All I want to know
    42        at the moment is if carton board comes out at so many
    43        tonnes of pulp for 1,000 tonnes of carton board, can you
    44        give me how many tonnes of pulpwood plus tonnes of sawmill
    45        residue for what I might describe as ordinary paper?  The
    46        only reason I am asking, might it be as different as half
    47        as much or twice as much, or is it going to be within 20 or
    48        20 per cent of the carton board figures or some other
    49        percentage or can you just not say?
    50        A.  My Lord, the conversion from tonnage of paper in a 
    51        sense is the yield from the forest resource.  A tonne will 
    52        produce a mileage of thin paper and rather less of thick 
    53        paper.  When it comes to cartoon board, obviously, less in
    54        terms carton board surface area when it is a thick carton
    55        board.  So tonnage is a reasonable calculation to use when
    56        moving from the product of the forest which is measured in
    57        metre cube which is approximately 1 metre cube to the
    58        tonne; that is an approximate figure at a certain stage in
    59        that calculation.  In simple answer, the tonnage factor is
    60        a perfectly reasonable measurement tool whatever the type

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