Day 292 - 01 Nov 96 - Page 49


     
     1        On page 43, I referred to the EDF report, which basically
     2        said that foam was worse in every way than paper, which we
     3        have already demonstrated that.  McDonald's were aware of
     4        the damaging effects of paper packaging and so the EDF
     5        report says basically that foam is worse in every way,
     6        including 400 percent more waste by volume compared to
     7        paper.  I was going to quote that section, but it can be
     8        read.  That is line 48 onwards.
     9
    10        Page 54, paper bags.  Less than 50 percent recycled, by
    11        McDonald's terminology, before June 1990.  Now, there was a
    12        whole run through here of percentages of recycled contents
    13        without indicating post-consumer and post-industrial
    14        content.  The paper bags contents seemed to be the one that
    15        they always referred to as an example of how they have had
    16        longstanding recycled packaging, but the content seemed to
    17        have been somewhere around 25, 30 percent before June 1990,
    18        or something.
    19
    20        So may be it would be worth reading pages 54 to the rest of
    21        that day, really, because the note in square brackets,
    22        where I have just finished, says CVE, that is Mr. Erp, on
    23        day 62, line 38 said that the rest of Europe had nought
    24        percent recycled content in their paper bags until February
    25        1992, which rather gives a better picture of the reality of
    26        the recycled content when we look at the European-----
    27
    28   MR JUSTICE BELL:  Day 62, page 38.
    29
    30   MR. MORRIS:   Page 38, line 2.  Then we have page 56.  There was
    31        an argument about whether the bags are now hundred percent
    32        or eighty percent.  There was a lot of toing and froing
    33        about that.  Mr. Van Erp came in to say it was somewhere
    34        between the two, or something.
    35
    36        Page 61 is the two and four hole trays, which seemed to be
    37        the only item in the early 80s made substantially of
    38        recycled paper.  Obviously, we would say in any event they
    39        are a completely superfluous item of packaging which are
    40        not used in Europe, and there was some evidence on that.
    41
    42        So their recycled content would be immaterial.  The point
    43        is, every gram of virgin fibre in them would be completely
    44        wasteful, even in McDonald's own terms, because nowhere
    45        else in Europe were they using these carry out trays.
    46
    47        They also said on day 61, that is the note in brackets at
    48        the end of that point, day 61, line 22, page 22, line 57,
    49        that it was a suppliers' initiative to have recycled
    50        content in these two and four hole trays which anyway only
    51        are the kind of cardboardy things, it was not even
    52        McDonald's initiative.
    53
    54        The next point on page 61 is all about the paper bag
    55        content.  The note underneath it is, 'originally nought
    56        percent and 10, 25 percent in the late '70s, early '80s'.
    57        Day 61, page 24.
    58
    59        On page 64 he made the point that the only unbleached
    60        packaging they had was the paper bags with two and four

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