Day 293 - 04 Nov 96 - Page 11
1 academic because we are talking about pre-1990, so...
2
3 Finally, in this kind of European area, there was a
4 document which was minutes of the McDonald's Development
5 Corporation, McDonald's Europe, and again I could not find
6 the reference to this. Perhaps Mrs. Brinley-Codd can
7 help. (Pause) I think it was a document that came after we
8 asked Mr. Van Erp about pre-1991 documentation which he had
9 seen, or something, and then it was disclosed later. It
10 was dated... It looks like this. If that is any help.
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What is the date?
13
14 MR. MORRIS: On it, it is dated 21 January, 1991. On the
15 actual memo, itself. It was a meeting, waste versus
16 disposables meeting, which had representatives of all four
17 countries facing this issue, which was Germany, Switzerland
18 and Sweden, and Holland, which were apparently under
19 legislative pressure, McDonald's were under legislative
20 pressure, for environmental reasons to end their disposable
21 packaging.
22
23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You said waste versus disposables. Did you
24 mean reusable?
25
26 MR. MORRIS: It is dull - actually says 'waste versus
27 disposables meeting'. I don't know why it was called
28 that. So there were also people from McDonald's UK,
29 McDonald's Development Company, Persico, and the public
30 relations people, Wellbeck, Gold and Harris, at the meeting
31 and the general drift of it, and it did come up in - I
32 can't remember where - it came in cross-examination, about
33 how this was like an organised meeting to launch a kind of
34 PR reaction to the legislative and environmental concerns
35 about McDonald's packaging waste. And there were some
36 quite revealing comments in it where, for example, on page
37 2 of that document, Mike Matthews and Corine Reed at that
38 meeting indicated that solid waste is not yet a key concern
39 in the UK and the implications of this.... I will not go
40 into it, but McDonald's reacts because of public pressure
41 or statutory pressure, but that it is important for them to
42 be seen to preempt that and to take the moral high ground
43 once they feel it is going to be an issue, which is again a
44 kind of double criticism of their approach.
45
46 For example, in the second paragraph on that page it says:
47 The recycling programme, "ideas such as Clarges (?) which
48 is a recycling programme are worth investigating in that
49 waste packaging concerns will soon arise in the UK as
50 well." So it is worth investigating it because they are
51 going to be facing some public pressure, not because it is
52 a good thing in itself.
53
54 Then there are various references in the next paragraph on
55 page 2 about very important to have marketing PR people
56 involved in these issues. I will just skip through.
57 (Pause).
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If you do track down where I find that.... I
60 mean, it may be obvious. If I look, I may find it is
