Day 293 - 04 Nov 96 - Page 16


     
     1        England?
     2
     3   MR. MORRIS:   You may have done.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That is in the left-hand margin, beneath the
     6        picture.
     7
     8   MR. MORRIS:   Right.  I notice it says....  Well, I mean, our
     9        point would be the point that McDonald's recognise that it
    10        should be done, it could be done and we are saying that it
    11        is not being done.  That is basically the long and short of
    12        it.
    13
    14        They were doing recycling in a substantial number of stores
    15        at one point, but it was down to 10 stores out of 10,000 by
    16        the time Robert Beavers gave evidence for the second time,
    17        I think, or it was Mr. Langert who said that only 10 stores
    18        were now doing it.
    19
    20        Then that report ends up on page 2, the very last sentence
    21        of that large typeface:  And we are firmly committed to
    22        recycling at every opportunity.  So, this is part of the
    23        impression that is being given publicly.
    24
    25        If you look on the far right box on that page, they have
    26        actually talked about there were some benches made out of
    27        recycled McDonald's coffee cups, so it is clear that they
    28        were actually able to do recycling.
    29
    30        That is basically it.  I wanted to refer to those two
    31        pages.
    32
    33   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, thank you.
    34
    35   MR. MORRIS:   Now, again, I might be a little bit dodging about
    36        all over the place here, but I wanted to refer to just a
    37        few things in Robert Langert's statement.
    38
    39   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Right.
    40
    41   MR. MORRIS:   Who joined McDonald's in 1991.  Just very briefly
    42        in paragraph 5, he said that McDonald's approach to its
    43        packaging, recycling and waste has evolved over a number of
    44        years as a response to changing environmental concerns.
    45        Again this is part of our argument.  Then he goes on about
    46        the serious concern from environmentalists in the 1970s
    47        about the destruction of trees, water pollution and the
    48        high use of energy involved in manufacturing paper.  That
    49        is all in paragraph 5.  We have heard about all that.
    50 
    51        Now, paragraph 9 is where he said that the average 
    52        McDonald's restaurant produces about 140 pounds of 
    53        packaging on premises waste per day.  Now, I could not get
    54        to the bottom of whether this was the calculation from the
    55        waste product that was left in the store and therefore did
    56        not include any of the take-away packaging or not.  I did
    57        not have time to check all that.  But we are talking about
    58        140 pounds minimum waste, possibly double that if you
    59        include take-away that is not considered.
    60

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