Day 292 - 01 Nov 96 - Page 12
1 and plates. The point is, is it damaging to the
2 environment and do people have a right to say so.
3
4 And that will be, no doubt, in Mr. Rampton's submission one
5 of his goalpost moving efforts, where he says, "well, they
6 have not really got any choice, they are doing the best
7 they can", but that might be a fair enough right to reply
8 to criticisms but it does not give them the right to
9 suppress valid criticisms by environmentalists and outlaw
10 that kind of free speech. I cannot really imagine any
11 situation where people in this country or anywhere else
12 will not think that fast food packaging is wasteful and
13 damaging.
14
15 Moving on with Mr. Oakley, in some countries the company
16 has admitted abandoning or limiting the use of polystyrene
17 packaging in part because it was not biodegradable and took
18 up a lot of space in land fill sites. And so if, as the
19 company have claimed, that their packaging is only a very
20 small part of land fill, then why stop using it if it is
21 such an insignificant part. The point is, it is a
22 recognition, public recognition and an attempt to get
23 public credibility for it, having done so in the face of
24 criticism, that their packaging has contributed to the land
25 fill problem.
26
27 Mr. Oakley stated there was no land fill problem in the UK,
28 which I think is an extremely irresponsible statement
29 because the problem is one that is a growing problem. The
30 fact it has not reached capacity yet will be no thanks to
31 those who create this disposable packaging who are the
32 people responsible for the land fill filling up. And he
33 was asked: As long as there is room in the dumps, there is
34 no problem with dumping lots of McDonald's waste in the
35 ground. He replied: And everybody else's waste, yes, that
36 is true. I can see the dumping of waste to be of benefit;
37 otherwise, you would end up with lots of vast empty gravel
38 pits all over the country. Asked if he was asserting it as
39 environment benefit to dump waste in land fill sites, he
40 stated: It could be, yes, it is certainly not a problem.
41
42 Now, this is not anybody; this is the person who is in
43 charge, he is the head of purchasing, including packaging,
44 for McDonald's in Northern Europe. And I think this is a
45 feature of the case, that -- and it may be so normal that
46 it seems acceptable that a company should be able to
47 portray themselves in a -- put over an image about what
48 they stand for and what they do and what the effect of it
49 is, while denying that the criticisms that are made have
50 any credence.
51
52 At one point in the advertising section you said "well,
53 that is what advertising is about", kind of thing, that,
54 you know, that the point is ----
55
56 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That was not an indication that I approved
57 of advertising in the context of this case or that I am a
58 great fan of it at all.
59
60 MR. MORRIS: So the fact that something is general in our
