Day 009 - 08 Jul 94 - Page 29
1 was a campaign to spread information about polystyrene
usage by McDonald's.
2
Q. As part of that campaign, or just as a campaign on its
3 own, were you aware of school children posting back ---
A. No
4
Q. -- styrofoam packaging?
5 A. No, I am not aware of that. I am aware of school
children that would go to either one or two of our
6 restaurants and make their interest known to the store
management. That I am aware of.
7
Q. How were they making their interests known?
8 A. I do not know. I was not there. I knew of the
reports.
9
Q. What, company reports?
10 A. No. I just knew -- I am not sure -- I think it was in
the newspapers, I recall.
11
Q. Right. It was quite a widespread thing, was it not?
12 A. No. The vast majority of our input, as I said
yesterday, part of my responsibility is to review all
13 customer enquiries about the environment. That is part of
my responsibility. Back then, the vast majority of our
14 enquiries about the environment were not of the category
that you talked about. They were a wide range of
15 different people asking about the polystyrene issue.
16 Q. You read reports about protests of, you know, people going
into stores, school children going into stores?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. But you did not read any reports about thousands of
letters pouring into McDonald's head office on the
19 styrofoam issue?
A. I know we did not. I know exactly how many letters we
20 got at McDonald's -- it was not thousands of letters.
21 Q. How many do you say it was then?
A. Again I would have to check exactly. Probably -- what
22 year are you asking about?
23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you have a particular year in mind or do
you want to give a bracket of time?
24
MISS STEEL: Hold on a second. I think it was in the late
25 80s/early 90's.
A. We started receiving hundreds of letters on the
26 polystyrene issue, probably beginning 1988, 1989 through
1990, until we made the switch. Our general customer
27 base, that included youth, it included senior citizens and
it included adults. We had a wide variety of letters come
28 in. My estimation, for example, for the year 1989 would
be perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 letters would have come in on
29 this issue. I cannot answer how many came from youths or
kids, but it was a variety of input from all ages.
30
Q. So it was a considerable number of people writing into
