Day 009 - 08 Jul 94 - Page 64
1
Q. Can you explain what that refers to, what was that
2 statute?
A. Portland drafted local law that would ban the use of
3 polystyrene foam packaging in their community.
4 Q. Did McDonald's, therefore, comply with that statute?
A. Yes.
5
MR. JUSTICE BELL: What was the jurisdiction of that authority,
6 the City of Portland?
A. City of Portland, Oregon.
7
MR. MORRIS: McDonald's opposed that statute, correct?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Unsuccessfully?
A. Yes. They enacted the legislation.
10
Q. But complied with it?
11 A. Then we complied with it.
12 Q. Are there any other authorities that did the same thing?
A. There were a couple of small communities, probably
13 five small communities, very small communities, that
banned the use of polystyrene packaging. The biggest
14 community to ban polystyrene was Suffel County in New
York. Suffel County is a huge county that has a couple of
15 million people in it. They had drafted legislation to ban
polystyrene in 1988.
16
Just recently it went through a whole serious of debates
17 as to whether they should really enforce that law or not
and as recently as a couple of months based on a study
18 that a independent university did in New York, they
finally did an environmental impact analyses of the law
19 that they crafted.
20 When they did the environmental assessment, the findings
of that study were that the law they passed in Suffel
21 County would do nothing to improve the environmental
aspects of Suffel County. Therefore, the conclusion of
22 the County legislators was that they took away the law for
not enforcing it.
23
Q. Why? What was your understanding of why they banned the
24 styrofoam?
A. Why there was people wanting to ban it back in 1989?
25 Is that a question?
26 Q. Yes.
A. Symbolism. Polystyrene foam symbolised the whole
27 solid waste crisis and what happened, in reality, is after
the facts came out, instead of everybody rushing to ban
28 polystyrene, once all the facts came out from 1989
through, let us say, 1991, people realised that was not a
29 real solution to the solid waste issue. Therefore, any
other initiatives to ban polystyrene all disappeared.
30
As we speak today, there has been virtually no activity in
